Anonymous Answer

When I was working as an Info Security Architect, there was a critical program for dealing with the Firecall Emergency IDs with passwords in envelopes that were created by a privileged access administrator. I was asked to solve the problem and an alternative approach to these known passwords. I first tried to learn what the issue was and what was driving it, then what options were available to solve it internal vs external. I had basically two options, develop a solution in-house with limited developer resources or buy a Cots application. I met with Gartner and there were only two solutions that they had not formally reviewed. Met with both did proof of concept with both. Had SMEs who were privileged Admins UNIX and WINDOWS work on the POC. At end of the day, both products were limited on their platforms but one was more bank workflow focused. So I went back to leadership to find out what kind of budget we could spend. Total with hardware licensing etc 400K. Went back to the vendor and negotiated if they would work with our administrators on several additional platforms and develop PAR (Password Auto Repository), we would go with their solution. This was a win-win for both vendor and the bank. This project took about 2 years to be completely BAU across 7 platforms. But, they are still using the solution today.