Identity Governance Blog

What is Privileged Access Management? The Importance and Benefits of PAM Explained

See how Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) serve distinct aspects of user access management.

In general, Access Management in modern IT environments employs a set of documented processes that enable organizations to control the granting of access rights to regular and privileged users while ensuring users do not violate organizational security policies and adhere to compliance regulations such as segregation of duties (SoD).

Privileged Access Management is a set of technologies and practices that help organizations secure, monitor, and control access to sensitive resources by privileged users or accounts.

When administrators create identities for employees, contractors, partners and other stakeholders in their IT architectures, they initiate an identity lifecycle management process for these users in the organization. Throughout the identity lifecycle, as users move around the organization their needs to access data, applications, and other resources change. Access Management processes enable organizations to ensure users have access rights sufficient to perform day-to-day responsibilities in whatever role they are engaged.

Maintaining appropriate access management for administrators and users is a constantly moving target; frequently administrators need to extend access rights to a system because a user has been assigned to a new department or region, or because they get promoted and require access to additional functionality in applications they already use. At the same time, organizations may onboard new applications and sensitive resources to the IT architecture to which users must have access to do their jobs. Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) are both essential to these processes.

It is critical for organizations to differentiate between IGA and PAM so they can choose the right solutions to meet their access management goals. In this post, we will compare and contrast PAM and IGA, present the principal challenges of implementing them, and explain the benefits of each.

 

What is Privileged Access Management?

Privileged Access Management is a set of technologies and practices that help organizations secure, monitor, and control access to sensitive resources by privileged users or accounts. Examples of privileged user accounts would include system or database admins, network engineers, and any employee, contractor, vendor, or partner whose role for whatever reason requires elevated permissions to applications and data. Privileged accounts represent an elevated risk for identity theft, increasing the threat of security breaches of an organization’s IT infrastructure. PAM addresses these challenges as part of an overall Identity Access Management (IAM) strategy.

A privileged user account includes system or database admins, network engineers, and any employee, contractor, vendor, or partner whose role requires elevated permissions to applications and data.

What is Identity Governance and Administration?

Identity Governance and Administration is an element of Identity and Access Management (IAM) that focuses on establishing and enforcing policies, processes, and controls to manage digital identities and their access to applications and resources. It ensures that identity and access rights are aligned with organizational goals, compliance requirements, and cybersecurity best practices.

 

Key Differences Between Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) and Privileged Access Management (PAM)

What is privileged management (PAM)

  1. Purpose
    PAM:
    Focuses on securing, monitoring, and managing user access to accounts with elevated permissions that can make changes to critical systems or access sensitive data.
    IGA: Uses identity lifecycle management to govern who has access to what across the organization and ensure compliance with identity security policies.
  2. Scope
    PAM:
    Primarily limited to high-risk, high-impact privileged accounts (e.g., system administrators, root accounts, database administrators).
    IGA: Has a broader scope and focuses on provisioning, deprovisioning, access certification, and policy enforcement across all user identities and access, including regular users, contractors, and privileged accounts.
  3. Functionality
    PAM: Manage privileged credentials securely (e.g., via vaulting), enforce just-in-time access and the Principle of Least Privilege, monitor and audit privileged session activity for anomalous behavior, and provide features like session recording, password rotation, and elevation control.
    IGA: Automate onboarding and offboarding, provide Role-based Access Control (RBAC) and access reviews, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements like SOX and GDPR, and handle certification campaigns that reinforce Segregation of Duties (SoD).
  4. Principal Use Cases
    PAM: Typically used by IT administrators, security teams, and operations teams managing critical infrastructure.
    IGA: Designed for broader organizational use, including HR, compliance teams, and business units.
PAMIGA
Focus and ScopePrivileged usersAll identities
Primary GoalSecurity and controlGovernance and compliance
ImplementationTacticalStrategic
Principal Use CasesAccess control for adminsAccess for all users

 

How PAM and IGA Work Together

Do not look at these processes as PAM vs. IGA vs. IAM because PAM and IGA are not mutually exclusive but complementary, and both are elements of IAM.

  1. PAM enhances security for high-risk accounts by providing granular control and oversight of privileged access.
  2. IGA ensures organization-wide governance by enforcing policies and ensuring users (including privileged users) have appropriate access.

By integrating PAM and IGA with other IAM tools, organizations can achieve a holistic Identity and Access Management strategy, balancing security, compliance, and operational efficiency.

 

When to Choose PAM, IGA, or Both

Since PAM and IGA solutions are both critical elements in an organization’s IAM strategy, it is important to understand when to choose a PAM or IGA solution or both.

PAM is essential in scenarios where an organization must protect sensitive data and manage access to privileged accounts. IGA is essential for managing the identity lifecycle for all users and for helping organizations meet compliance requirements.

To help the right people or machines get access to the assets they need when they need them to perform their roles, organizations typically use both PAM and IGA among other processes. Taken as part of a holistic approach to IAM, PAM and IGA contribute significantly to organizations looking to maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of systems, applications, and data. IGA enables organizations to adhere to regulatory compliance requirements in a way that ensures security without impeding efficiency and PAM helps to mitigate the chances of cybersecurity incidents like insider threats and data breaches among users with elevated permissions to access assets and applications in the IT infrastructure.

 

Common Challenges and Considerations

Implementing PAM and IGA is not without its challenges. Three principal ones to consider are:

  1. Implementation Cost: Migrating to modern IGA and PAM solutions is perceived in many organizations as cost prohibitive. While operating and maintaining a legacy system may seem easier, organizations must understand that in today’s dynamic threat landscape using outdated technology that no longer supports your business operations and cannot meet future compliance and privileged access control requirements will be a more costly decision over time.
  2. Integration Issues: After implementation costs, most organizations are concerned with the ability of their integration plan to help them achieve tangible PAM and IGA benefits, as well as the technical decommissioning of the current system. Organizations must work with well-established SaaS-based PAM and IGA solution providers that can effectively demonstrate they can integrate while exposing the existing infrastructure to the least possible risk, with minimal organizational impact and transformation requirements.
  3. Training Requirements: Organizations must work with solution providers that have established training organization and can provide a single-point-of-contact in service and solution support once the solution has been deployed to account for current and future training needs.

 

Benefits of Implementing PAM and IGA

IGA safeguards sensitive data by granting only authorized individuals the necessary access privileges to do their job. IGA provides organizations with granular visibility into user access, including who accesses what, why, and when. This visibility into user access patterns enables organizations to effectively mitigate risks, prevent unauthorized access, and ensure compliance with industry regulations. Benefits of IGA include:

  1. Enhances Security: Protect sensitive data and resources by ensuring only authorized users have access.
  2. Ongoing Compliance Demonstration: Meet regulatory requirements and industry standards by maintaining proper oversight and documentation of access rights.
  3. More Efficiency Identity Access: Streamline user identity and access management processes with automation and role-based models such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC).
  4. Risk Reduction: Identify and mitigate risks from excessive access, orphaned accounts, or policy violations.

PAM is essential for organizations to safeguard their most sensitive systems and data against threats originating with privileged administrator accounts. Benefits of PAM include:

  1. 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 reduce the risk of unauthorized access from privileged accounts.
  2. 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 solutions help limit the opportunities for internal misuse by monitoring and restricting privileged access.
  3. Helps Ensure Compliance: By governing privileged identities and their associated access rights, organizations can demonstrate that they are consistently adhering to sufficient controls. PAM helps organizations show compliance with regulatory and security standards.
  4. 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.
  5. Enhances Productivity: Simplifying privileged access request management and automating workflows are critical for ensuring that privileged users gain access to the resources they need sooner and maximizing their productivity.

To learn more about IGA and PAM deployments, see Omada’s IGA product brief.

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