Centrally Managed Impersonation

A method for managing impersonation by an impersonation management system having a central server and at least one remote shell daemon running on at least one remote machine, wherein the central server and the at least one remote shell daemon have a trust relationship, the method comprising,

• accepting, at a remote machine, a connection request from a central server;
• receiving, at the remote machine, an impersonation policy;
• receiving, at the remote machine, a user action;
• determining whether the user action requires an elevated privilege to execute;
• identifying the elevated privilege based on the impersonation policy if determined;
• impersonating an account with the elevated privilege if identified;
• executing the user action;
• and
• sending a response to the central server.

A networked impersonation management system, comprising:

• a remote machine having a remote shell daemon running on the remote machine;
• and
• a central server having—
• a processing unit configured to accept a request to act on the remote machine,
• an authentication unit, coupled to the processing unit, configured to manage access to the impersonation management system,
• an impersonation unit, coupled to the processing unit, configured to manage connections to the remote machine to impersonate an elevated privilege account, and
• a storage device, coupled to the processing unit, for storing configuration settings of the authentication unit and the impersonation unit.