A Tennessee Playbook for Privileged Access: 7 Controls Small Businesses Can Adopt

Start with a list of systems where elevated access could expose sensitive information or interrupt operations. For each system, record the privileged identities, whether each belongs to a person or software process, who approves its use, and who is responsible for reviewing it.

Tennessee's policy assigns access rules to resource owners and calls for access requirements to be documented and maintained. It also says information-security responsibilities should be defined and assigned. For a small business, the owner may be an operations manager, practice administrator, controller, or outside IT lead—but the decision should not be ownerless.

• Begin with email, cloud administration, banking, payroll, backups, firewalls, servers, line-of-business applications, and remote-support tools.
• Include vendors and non-human identities, not just employees.
• Record where credentials are stored and whether MFA, logging, or rotation is available.

Define how elevated access is requested, approved, changed, and removed. Tennessee's policy calls for formal registration and de-registration, authorized provisioning, regular review, and adjustment when a person's role changes. It also requires state access to be revoked under defined departure conditions.

A smaller organization can adopt the principle without copying the state's exact deadlines: use a short approval record, tie access changes to onboarding and offboarding checklists, and establish an internal removal target that matches the risk. Vendor access should have an owner and an end date rather than remaining open indefinitely.

The state policy says access should follow least privilege and that privileged rights should be restricted and controlled. In practical terms, someone who needs to reset passwords does not automatically need control of billing, security policies, and every mailbox.

Use role-based groups where the platform supports them. Remove local administrator rights that are not needed for routine work. Give vendors access only to the systems they support. Where feasible, make elevated access temporary for a specific task instead of permanently active.

Tennessee's policy states that system administrator accounts should be used only when elevated privileges are required, prohibits sharing credentials intended for one person, and distinguishes elevation from a lesser account. That separation limits how often powerful credentials are exposed during ordinary email, browsing, and office work.

Give administrators a named standard account for daily work and a separate named administrative identity for elevated tasks. Avoid shared accounts when individual identities are possible. If a legacy system forces sharing, document the exception, store the credential securely, control who can retrieve it, rotate it when access changes, and preserve accountability through other logs.

Service accounts often run applications, integrations, backups, or scheduled jobs without a person signing in. Tennessee's policy says service accounts should be unique to each application or system and used only to authenticate those systems to specific services. It separately requires privileged access to system accounts to be approved and documented.

Create an owner and purpose for every service account. Grant only the permissions the workload needs, prevent interactive sign-in when the platform allows it, and avoid reusing one account across unrelated applications. Store secrets in a managed vault or platform-native secret store, and test rotation so an old password does not become permanent merely because changing it might interrupt a critical job.

Tennessee requires multifactor VPN access for the state remote-access and server-administration scenarios described in its policy. NIST's small-business MFA guidance explains that MFA adds another barrier when a password is compromised and recommends considering phishing-resistant methods for elevated users and applications containing sensitive information.

Prioritize cloud administrators, remote-support tools, VPNs, financial systems, password vaults, and backup consoles. Prefer phishing-resistant options, such as security keys or passkeys, when the service supports them. MFA reduces credential risk, but it does not replace least privilege, secure recovery processes, or monitoring.

Utilities and manufacturers should apply these controls to operational technology as well; see our guide to securing remote SCADA and PLC access.

Tennessee's policy calls for access rights to be reviewed and updated regularly and when requirements change. Its logging section says administrator activity should be logged, protected, and regularly reviewed. A small business may not operate a 24-hour security center, but it can still establish a workable review rhythm.

• Review the privileged-access list on a defined schedule and after staffing or vendor changes.
• Alert on new administrator assignments, MFA changes, disabled logging, unusual remote access, and changes to backup or security settings when supported.
• Send important logs somewhere the same administrator cannot casually erase them.
• Document who reviews alerts and what should trigger escalation.