PAM: Meaning and Definition

PAM

PAM (privileged access management) is the set of controls that secure accounts and credentials with elevated rights, such as domain admins, root, cloud owners and database administrators, by vaulting their credentials, brokering and recording their sessions, and granting elevation just in time instead of permanently. A PAM solution is the product that does this.

A PAM solution typically includes	It is not
Credential vault with automatic rotation	A general password manager for every employee
Session brokering and session recording	IGA, which decides who should be entitled to access
Just-in-time elevation that removes standing privilege	Secrets management for application credentials, though suites now bundle both
Privileged remote access for vendors and remote admins	A VPN

PAM programs succeed or fail on adoption rather than features. Vaulting and session brokering work only if the privileged path through the tool is faster than the path around it, and engineers will route around a slow one. The modern direction is to reduce what needs vaulting at all by moving to just-in-time elevation and short-lived credentials, so there is less standing privilege to protect.

PAM

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