Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a subset of Identity Governance. As a discipline, it consists of much more than just password management. Today, PAM encompasses credential (password, key, etc.) storage and rotation, session monitoring and auditing, least privilege management, remote access, directory bridging, and all the reporting and analytics to make a career for any cybersecurity professional. What is interesting about PAM is that, while each technology listed above can technically operate on its own, they work synergistically when integrated together.
When the concepts of password management are merged with least privileged management on any platform, administrator or root access controls can evolve to present real risk reduction strategies for insider threats and privileged attack vectors. When the integration is honed into specific platforms like UNIX and Linux, then a privileged access management revolution can occur--empowering administrators and security teams to have transparent usage to resources with fine-grained policies, user controls, command auditing, and session management. Such an IT risk management revolution is only possible through an integrated PAM platform, and not with point solutions.
These synergies are being recognized by end-user communities and highlighted by analysts. To this point, KuppingerCole has recently released a new paper: “Integrating Password and Privilege Management for Unix and Linux Systems” authored by Martin Kuppinger. It investigates the risk mitigation provided by privileged access solutions and how integrations deliver auditing and security value for organizations that far exceeds the sum of the individual PAM components.
“While PAM is derived from a number of different roots, it has become a unified discipline. Efficient control of privileged access to heterogeneous IT environments requires integrated toolsets instead of a multitude of disparate, non-integrated tools.“ Martin Kuppinger, Founder and Principal Analyst, KuppingerCole.
If you would like to gain deeper insights into the synergies an integrated PAM solution can confer to your environment, read the new KuppingerCole white paper. This white paper covers each of the PAM disciplines and how organizations can benefit the most when a unified strategy and PAM product platform is applied to privileged access challenges.
