How Do the 10 Top Privileged Identity Management (PIM) Vendors Stack Up? See Evaluation & Ranking

BeyondTrust is proud to have been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave^TM: Privileged Identity Management, Q4 2020. BeyondTrust was among the 10 most significant Privileged Identity Management vendors that Forrester invited to participate in its Q4 2020 Forrester Wave evaluation.

Read on to learn more about this year’s PIM Wave and to download your own complimentary copy.

What is Privileged Identity Management (PIM)?

In their PIM Wave Report, Forrester writes, “PIM suites secure credentials and secrets in vaults; monitor and record privileged user activity; and employ least privilege tactics for granular access to Windows and Unix/Linux endpoints.”

The term PIM is also used interchangeably with PAM (privileged access management). BeyondTrust has an expansive view of PIM/PAM, and we see it as securing every user (human or machine), session, and asset across your IT or OT environment. We call this Universal Privilege Management.

What is the Forrester PIM Wave?

The Forrester PIM Wave is an evaluation of the “10 [PIM] providers that matter most and how they stack up.” An increasing number of vendors claim privilege management capabilities to secure and manage the exploding number of privileged accounts, assets, and sessions across IT environments. Independent research like the Forrester PIM Wave is more important than ever in providing an unbiased evaluation, scoring, and ranking of PIM vendors and products based on their ability to meet modern privilege management challenges.

The Forrester Wave assesses vendor capabilities across twenty-four criteria grouped in three categories: Current Offering, Strategy, and Market Presence.

Privilege Management Trends & Recommendations

In this year’s report, Forrester called out the following trends:

The definition of a privileged user continues to expand beyond IT users to other roles.
The coronavirus pandemic has, “amped up remote access requirements for privileged users.”
Machine identities are growing at twice the rate of human identities.

Forrester also makes three recommendations regarding the capabilities customers should seek in a PIM vendor:

Deliver an intuitive user experience and integrated PIM platform.
Provide capabilities that align to a least privilege model and just-in-time access.
Address new PIM use cases (i.e. DevOps teams, IT admins configuring cloud infrastructure, bots, IoT, and API-driven workloads).

How Did BeyondTrust Stack up in the PIM Wave?

At the outset of this year’s PIM Wave report, Forrester assesses that, “The complex nature of managing privileged users, and the environments they must integrate with and manage, benefits greatly from tools that can simplify and provide low-friction security for PIM users.”

BeyondTrust could not agree more with Forrester’s sentiments. These values are part of our DNA as a PIM innovator, and we think this is reflected in BeyondTrust’s performance in the 2020 PIM Wave.

The PIM Wave, Q4 2020 recognizes BeyondTrust as the top ranked vendor in the Strategy category and tied with one other vendor for the top ranking in the Market Presence category. We believe the strategy ranking not only validates the path we have taken thus far to provide a top tier PIM platform, but also the exciting evolutions and innovations we are executing on our roadmap.

BeyondTrust received the highest scores possible in 17 of 24 criteria, including:

Credential and Secrets Management
Session Monitoring and Recording
Remote Access and Support
Deployment
Insights and Reporting
Product Vision
Market Approach
Execution Roadmap
Supporting Products and Services
Commercial Model

The Forrester PIM Wave also states, “BeyondTrust strikes a balance between user experience and security.” There are thousands of cybersecurity vendors today and roughly 300 new ones emerging every year—every one of them clamoring that their solutions achieve that elusive balance between security and user experience/usability. We’re proud and humbled that one of the most esteemed, independent research firms for technology and security makes that characterization about BeyondTrust.

BeyondTrust PIM/PAM in 2020 & Beyond

2020 was a challenging year for the world. We look forward to a 2021 full of hope and renewal. But, in 2020, the business of BeyondTrust can be best summed up in one word: Momentum.

BeyondTrust was recognized as a privileged management leader in all three major analyst reports for the PIM/PAM space in 2020. In each subsequent report throughout the year, our position as a leader has improved as we aggressively innovated, strengthened our products, and continued to develop and build on our valuable partnerships.

BeyondTrust’s Universal Privileged Management model is resonating in the market. A slew of other vendors are scrambling to catch up to our leadership in now must-have capabilities, such as just-in-time access privileged access management and passwordless administration, among others.

But don’t just take our word for how BeyondTrust is leading the way in reducing the privileged attack surface: