CyberArk Secure Web Sessions: Protecting post-login blind spots

The problem: post-login blind spots

For years, organizations have invested heavily in Access Management (AM) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), yet identity-related breaches continue. Attackers know that getting past the "front door" is only half the battle. Once they gain access, they exploit trusted web sessions to escalate privileges and quietly exfiltrate data.

80% of organizations report employee misuse or abuse of access to applications, and nearly half admit they have a limited ability to audit what users are actually doing.

The solution: CyberArk Secure Web Sessions

CyberArk Secure Web Sessions (SWS) closes the post-login blind spot by providing real-time monitoring and recording of user activity within your most sensitive web applications. This allows IT teams to go beyond knowing "who gets in" to seeing exactly what happens next in detail.

Key capabilities of SWS

Session recording and AI-powered summaries

• Visual audit: SWS creates a step-by-step, video-like record of user activity by capturing screenshots at each critical action, such as a mouse click or keystroke.
• AI summaries: AI-powered features provide a quick-reference overview of the entire session to find risky behavior without watching hours of footage.

Continuous authentication

• Ongoing verification: SWS continuously verifies that the person behind the keyboard is the authorized user long after the initial login.
• Session hijacking protection: If suspicious behavior is detected or a session is left idle, SWS can trigger a re-authentication challenge to ensure the authorized user is in control.

Browser-level protection

• Action control: A lightweight browser extension enforces policies in real time, blocking risky actions like unauthorized copy-pasting or file downloads.
• Privacy focus: SWS is designed to record only the specific applications you choose to protect, ignoring everything outside the protected tab.

Use cases

Financial applications

• Monitoring: Gain full visibility into payroll changes, access to personally identifiable information (PII), and financial transactions.
• Compliance: Maintain an unalterable record of actions to meet strict requirements like SOX.

DevOps and IT teams

• Infrastructure control: Monitor activity within cloud consoles like AWS, Azure, and GCP to identify misconfigurations.
• Code security: Secure access to developer tools and CI/CD pipelines to protect source code from unauthorized deployments.

Business benefits

Using SWS allows organizations to apply PAM-grade session oversight to the general workforce and business users without the cost and complexity of full-scale PAM licenses for every account.