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Privileged access workstation · PAW

Give powerful admin roles a safer place to work.

A PAW is a dedicated, hardened workstation for sensitive administration. Select the roles you use, mark the controls already in place, and see what to review next.

Check your roles How a PAW helps

Protected admin path

01

Identity

Who can change access or security policy?

02

Workstation

Which device carries the privileged session?

03

Interface

Where is access checked and recorded?

The device, the account, and the access policy work together.

The overview

Why put admin work on a separate device?

Think about the laptop used for email, chat, documents, and browsing. If an admin also opens the identity control plane there, a malicious attachment or browser extension gets closer to a valuable session. A PAW narrows that exposure by keeping privileged tasks on a device built and monitored for that purpose.

It works best alongside separate admin identities, limited roles, strong authentication, time-limited access, and sign-in rules that check the device. A dedicated laptop alone is only one piece of the design.

What this adds

  • Less exposure of privileged sessions to everyday activity.
  • A device state that security teams can check and monitor.
  • A clear path to enforce and test administrative access.

Interactive role check

Map your roles to the controls they need.

Start with the work you actually do. The checklist turns your selections into a practical review list; it does not change anything in your tenant.

Select administrative roles

Step 01 · Scope

Which roles do you use?

Select the roles or responsibilities that exist in your environment.

0 selected
Mark controls already in place

Step 02 · Controls

What is already in place?

Check a control only if it applies to the selected roles. Your answers stay in this browser session.

Four-part reading series

Build the protected path, step by step

An engineer’s walk through the trust boundary, roles, rollout, and operation. Dates are a suggested reading schedule, not publication dates.