What is Privileged Access Management (PAM)?

What is Privileged Access Management?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a set of technologies and practices organizations use to secure, monitor, and manage access to critical systems, applications, and sensitive information by privileged users or accounts. Privileged user accounts, such as system administrators, database administrators, and network engineers, often have elevated permissions to resources. This creates an environment in which there is significant potential for security concerns that could lead to identity theft and costly breaches of an organization’s IT infrastructure. PAM as part of an overall Identity Access Management (IAM) strategy addresses these challenges.

Key Components of Privileged Access Management

Credential Vaulting

This involves storing and managing sensitive credentials such as passwords, SSH keys, API tokens, and certificates—in a centralized, encrypted repository called a vault. Credential Vaulting ensures that privileged credentials are protected from unauthorized access, misuse, or theft.

Session Management

Tracks and monitors privileged sessions in real-time, enabling administrators to observe user activity and enforce session recording.

Access Control

Enforces policies to grant users’ access to resources based on the roles and job functions assigned to them within an organization. Rather than assigning permissions to individual users, permissions are grouped by role, and users are assigned to roles that determine what actions they can perform and which resources they can access within an IT infrastructure. Access Control enables organizations to enforce the principle of least privilege in their IT infrastructure.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

This adds additional layers of security to verify user identities before granting access. The process implements multiple steps that a user must complete before being granted access to internal resources, applications, or data. MFA may be executed in a combination of something a user knows like a username/password combination, or your mother’s maiden name, something they are like a fingerprint or retina scan, or something they have like a push sent to a mobile device, or a onetime passcode (OTP).

Just-in-Time Access (JIT)

Provides temporary access to privileged employees’, contractors’, partners’, and vendors’ accounts only when needed, reducing the risk of potential incidents or compromised user identities.

Audit and Reporting

Logs all privileged activities, providing audit trails to support compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX.

Benefits of Privileged Access Management

Reduces Attack Surface

Enforcing strict controls like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) helps organizations more easily detect unusual activity or anomalies in access patterns and reduces the risk of unauthorized access from privileged accounts.

Prevents Insider Threats

Insider attacks can either be an unintentional breach caused by accident, or an intentionally targeted attack of an individual or an organization due to malicious intent. In either case, PAM helps limit the opportunities for internal misuse by monitoring and restricting privileged access.

Ensures Compliance

By governing privileged identities and their associated access rights, organizations can demonstrate that they are consistently adhering to controls. PAM helps organizations show compliance with regulatory and security standards.

Improves Incident Response

Maintaining detailed audit logs is critical for enforcing policies like the principle of least privilege and Segregation of Duties (SoD) as well as for conducting forensic investigations that drive incident response.

Enhances Productivity

Simplifying privileged access management and automating workflows are critical for ensuring that privileged users gain access to the resources they need sooner and maximizing their productivity.

Privileged Access Management Use Cases

• Users of IT infrastructure such as partners, contractors, and vendors from outside an organization represent a significant threat of potential identity security breaches. Using PAM methods like MFA tools and Just-in-Time Access enable secure privileged user access without severely impacting business processes or user experiences.
• PAM helps facilitate administrative access to servers, databases, and network devices.
• PAM methods play a critical role in securing access to cloud environments and DevOps pipelines.

Where to Learn More

PAM is essential for organizations to safeguard their most sensitive systems and data against cyberattacks and insider threats while maintaining compliance with security standards.

As part of a Governance for Identity Fabric solution, PAM plays an important part in ensuring organizations adhere to compliance regulations, maintain identity security, and maximize efficiency in identity workflows. Omada Identity Cloud is the cornerstone of a SaaS-based Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) platform designed to deliver complete visibility and control over all users, applications, and resources an organization’s entire identity landscape. Get a demo.