2021 Gartner Buyers’ Guide for Privileged Access Management

“Privileged access represents a significant security risk for every organization, and privileged access management (PAM) is a discipline that must be considered a core part of every security program.”

Gartner, 2021 Buyers’ Guide for Privileged Access Management, 12 February 2021, Michael Kelley, Felix Gaehtgens, Abhyuday Data

Privileged access management (PAM) is widely recognized as a foundational security control and one of the most powerful ways to:

Reduce the cyberattack surface and threat windows
Prevent and mitigate external and internal threats—whether malicious in intent or inadvertent
Securely enable digital transformation
Operationalize a zero trust security approach

With all the above said, achieving success with PAM isn’t as straightforward as just going out and buying any solution. As Gartner sums up in their Buyers’ Guide for Privileged Access Management, “PAM is a journey, not a destination.” The 2021 Gartner’s Buyers’ Guide for Privileged Access Management is developed to help organizations navigate that journey. BeyondTrust is pleased to now offer you complimentary access to this guide, which features Gartner research compiled from over 1,000 recent PAM-related inquiries, as well as vendor surveys supporting Gartner PAM Magic Quadrant report and Critical Capabilities for PAM research.

An Evolving Privilege Management Market

As threats continue to evolve and digital transformation creates new technology frontiers, PAM has evolved to address those needs.

According to Gartner, the two core PAM disciplines today are

Privileged account and session management (PASM): These tools encompass vaulting and actively managing (rotating, creating unique, complex passwords, etc.) privileged credentials and brokering access for human, service, and application accounts. Privileged session management (PSM) establishes sessions, possibly using credential injection, and provides full session recording, with potentially the ability to pause or terminate suspicious sessions.

Privilege elevation and delegation management (PEDM): Also, referred to as endpoint privilege management, these tools involve granting specific privileges on the managed system by host-based agents to logged-in users. These tools may also provide host-based command control (filtering), application allow/deny/isolate controls and/or privilege elevation.

According to Gartner, the following two emerging technologies are adjacent to the core PAM technologies:

Secrets management: This involves automated management of non-human (machine, application, etc.) credentials (passwords, OAuth tokens, SSH keys, secrets, etc.). Secrets management tools are used to establish and broker trust and authorization between non-human entities, such as machines, containers, applications, services, scripts, processes, and DevSecOps pipelines.

Cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM): These emerging SaaS tools provide capabilities around discovery and management for dynamic cloud environments. CIEM tools help organization improve governance over entitlements to better control access risk in hybrid and multicloud IaaS. They can leverage analytics, machine learning (ML), and more to detect and highlight anomalies in account entitlements, such as accumulation of privileges, unused and / or superfluous entitlements, etc. Ideally, a CIEM tool can effect remediation and least privilege enforcement across multicloud and hybrid infrastructures.

With a rising number of PAM categories, PAM use cases, and vendors building or touting “PAM” functionality, it can be challenging for potential buyers to see through the noise to successfully map a tool to their needs. And, of course, different PAM tools may also be more labor intensive and require more specialized knowledge to administer than comparable tools.

By reading Gartner’s Buyers Guide for PAM, you can gain focus over your long-term vision for managing privileged access and implementing a solution. Gartner provides a 5-step approach, covered in the guide:

1. Define Drivers and Build Alignment

2. Define How You Want PAM to Work in Your Environment

3. Trends to Consider for PAM

4. Choosing a Vendor and Tool

5. Contract Negotiation and Project Planning

The guide also includes a sample PAM maturity curve to help you gauge your organization’s own PAM maturity.

Gartner, Buyers’ Guide for Privileged Access Management, 12 February 2021, Michael Kelley, Felix Gaehtgens, Abhyuday Data

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The GARTNER PEER INSIGHTS CUSTOMERS’ CHOICE badge is a trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology; they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliates.

Get Better Acquainted with BeyondTrust – A PAM Leader

BeyondTrust is recognized as a PAM Leader by Gartner.

BeyondTrust PAM solutions – Privileged Password Management, Endpoint Privilege Management, and Secure Remote Access, work in an integrated way to unify control over your entire privilege universe and drastically reduce your attack surface. Together, our solutions enable organizations to secure and manage privileges across every user, session, and asset.

To help you understand how BeyondTrust PAM solutions map to your privileged access security needs, we at BeyondTrust have created our own PAM Buyer’s Guide & Checklist. This asset also includes a 10-page template to help you identify your needs and assess and compare vendors. Download now

Here are a few reasons why BeyondTrust may be a good fit for you:

Offers a complete PAM platform, comprised of three solutions that can be purchased and rolled out separately, but integrate together, and can be centrally managed via one console

Provides the most robust, complete, and flexible approach for enforcing least privilege via our just-in-time PAM capabilities across the platform, as well as via our unsurpassed privilege elevation and delegation capabilities
Empowers you with leading-edge secure remote access capabilities to lock down access to control planes (cloud, virtual, DevOps, etc.), secure and audit privileged sessions for any type of user (vendor or employee), and also treat your service desk activities as part of the privileged access estate
Enables you to achieve leaps in risk reduction, fast. Our unique quick-start capabilities help organizations rapidly dial in least privilege controls, achieving ROI and measurable risk reduction, in hours or days, versus weeks or months with competitor solutions

Get the BeyondTrust PAM Buyer’s Buyer’s Guide & Checklist, or contact us today!