High-privilege administrative accounts hold the keys to the most sensitive IT functionality and information resources—yet paradoxically, this level of access is far too often based on little more than trust alone. Membership in a root or administrative user group is often the sole basis for access to the heart of IT itself—but these accounts are typically shared and may afford little visibility into the specific actions of any one privileged user. Despite these risks, high-privilege access has been implicated in episodes such as the subversion of large numbers of business systems and manipulated trading information at major financial services and health care enterprises. Abuse of access privileges has also factored into the corporate governance scandals of recent years, suggesting the role it may yet play in the outcomes of the present worldwide economic crisis.

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