What Is Privileged Access Management (PAM)?

Privileged access management (PAM) is the set of policies, workflows, and tools that control, monitor, and audit how users (typically developers, IT admins, and ops teams) access an organization’s most sensitive systems and data.

Key Takeaways

• PAM is a specialized area of IAM focused primarily on how privileged human users, such as developers, operators, and administrators, access sensitive systems.
• Core PAM workflows: permissions management, privileged session management, just-in-time access, credential management, and audit/compliance logging.
• You likely need PAM if you handle highly sensitive data or operate in a regulated industry (banking, healthcare, government).
• PAM primarily governs privileged human access; workload IAM governs access for applications, services, scripts, and AI agents.
• Aembit doesn’t offer PAM. We focus on identity and access management for workloads and AI agents, so use this guide to understand which category best fits the access problem you’re trying to solve.

Aembit doesn’t build PAM. Aembit provides identity and access management for workloads and AI agents, securing access initiated by applications, scripts, services, and agents rather than managing privileged human sessions. This guide will help you understand PAM on its own terms, and help you tell a PAM problem apart from a workload IAM problem.

As cloud migrations, workloads, microservices, and the use of SaaS explodes, infrastructure has become hyper distributed and increasingly dynamic. And with existing “private clouds” proving that they’re sticking around for a while longer, engineers sure have their hands full.

DevOps teams are looking to secure access to and within their production environment and are often considering a few different technologies. In this post, we’ll deep dive into one of those – privileged access management (PAM) – and provide a light comparison to an adjacent domain: workload identity and access management (IAM).

There’s never a single solution to a complex problem, but with some careful research and prioritizing your specific problems, you can make an informed investment in the right tech for you, right now.

The Access Management Universe

At the top level, there are three types of access management that matter to enterprises.

1) Workforce (User) IAM: This is what’s most commonly associated with IAM. It’s a system that simplifies and secures access between a user and the software systems to which they require regular access. This is a large area of the market today and also breaks down into specialized areas for types of users. More on this in a moment.

2) Customer IAM: These are the processes and tools that allow you to manage customers’ identity and access information. Think of this as third parties – excluding vendors and agencies – that need to access specific public-facing software and applications.

3) Workload IAM: Instead of a user or customer accessing a system, Workload IAM focuses on system-to-system communication. That is, one piece of software or infrastructure needs to communicate with another, whether it is in the same domain, a system distributed elsewhere, a SaaS service, or even a system belonging to a partner of yours.

You may be asking: Wait, where is PAM on this list? It turns out that Workforce IAM is broken down into a number of important subcategories. Among these are the management of third-party vendors, frontline workers, and notably, privileged access.

What’s the Difference Between PAM and Traditional IAM?

IAM is a system designed to manage enterprise user access at scale to typical systems such as collaboration tools, finance and accounting systems, HR tools, and so on. PAM, meanwhile, is targeted at a subset of systems (your production software) and a set of enterprise users (dev and ops) who need to access those sensitive systems in production.

What’s the Difference Between PAM and Workload IAM?

The biggest similarity and difference between privileged access management and workload IAM is that both focus on controlling access to the most sensitive systems you operate. PAM, however, is a form of controlling user access to sensitive systems, whereas workload IAM is focused on applications, scripts, and services accessing other sensitive systems.

Let’s now dig into PAM to provide a bit more detail on how it fits into your production environments – and when you need it.

Do I Need a PAM?

Short answer: if you build or operate systems with highly sensitive data, or you work in a regulated industry, the answer is almost certainly yes. Here’s how to know for sure, and what a PAM system actually does for you day to day.

PAM Workflow and Use Cases

With a basic understanding of where PAM fits, let’s now understand the core use cases of privileged access management and whether you need to solve for them. PAM will typically apply when you:

• Build and operate systems that contain highly sensitive data (think credit cards or health records).
• Operate in a highly regulated environment (i.e. banks, government, health care etc.).

While some might say that you should always manage access to your most sensitive systems, if either of the above two criteria do not apply to you, you may be able to get by with a lighter-weight process or tools rather than a dedicated PAM solution.

With PAM, you’ll get an opinionated, technical solution to solve for the following key workflows:

1) Permissions Management: Setting the right level of permissions based on users and workgroups to reduce ongoing management and one-off privilege escalation.

2) Privileged Session Management: Establish, manage, record, and replay user sessions that access sensitive infrastructure.

3) Just-in-Time Access: Grant access, log, and manage one-off or “break glass” access in an easy and auditable way.

4) Credential Management: Broker access to sensitive credentials and the vaults that store them.

5) Logging, Compliance, and Audit: Log access to sensitive systems to simplify compliance and audit requests.

Of course, all of this comes with cost, both in terms of dollars and effort, to set up a PAM. So let’s take a look at what it actually buys you, what it protects against, and then a typical PAM architecture.

Benefits of PAM

• Reduces standing privilege by granting access only when it’s needed (just-in-time access) instead of leaving permanent admin rights open indefinitely.
• Creates a full audit trail of who accessed what, when, and what they did once inside, which is critical for compliance frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2.
• Centralizes credential management so passwords and secrets for sensitive systems aren’t scattered across spreadsheets, config files, or individual memory.
• Shrinks your attack surface by limiting how many accounts and sessions can reach production systems at any given time.
• Speeds up incident response and forensics, since session recording and logging let you reconstruct exactly what a privileged user did.

PAM Risks and Threat Vectors

PAM exists to close off the ways privileged access gets abused. The main threat vectors it’s built to address:

• Credential theft and reuse: stolen or shared privileged credentials are one of the most common paths attackers use to reach production systems.
• Standing privileges: users who retain elevated access long after they need it create a persistent attack surface, since an attacker only needs to compromise one such account.
• Lateral movement: without session isolation and monitoring, an attacker who gains privileged access can move between systems largely undetected.
• Insider risk: without recording and audit trails, misuse by legitimate privileged users (intentional or accidental) is difficult to detect or prove after the fact.
• Compliance gaps: missing privileged-access logging is a common finding in PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2 audits, and can result in failed audits or regulatory exposure.

PAM Architecture and Components

While individual PAM offerings may vary slightly, there are four core elements that you should expect to deploy, integrate, and manage. Let’s examine an architecture example.

1) Client: Central to PAM’s functionality is the client interface, an application installed on the user’s device that grants them authorized access as needed. It’s crucial that this client is compatible with a variety of operating systems to accommodate diverse user environments. Authentication can occur directly through the PAM system or indirectly via a third-party service that verifies the user’s identity.

2) Gateway: The gateway brokers access to sensitive applications and services.

3) Relay (Optional): If your network is highly segmented, you may require relays within different environments to proactively open connections to the gateway.

4) Management Interface: Serving as the central hub for configuration and oversight, this interface allows for comprehensive control over the PAM system. Whether it’s implemented as on-premise software or accessed through a cloud-based service, this interface is pivotal for administering user roles, managing access permissions, distributing credentials, and logging activity.

Individual systems will have different workflows for you to learn and set up, in addition to separate lists of requirements or restrictions. See the section below on the important questions to ask your PAM vendor to understand the choices you’re making.

PAM Alternatives to Consider

First, let’s assess the marketplace. While this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of privileged access management vendors, they should give you a sense of the options available:

1) CyberArk: Considered a long-time leader in the space, CyberArk has been tackling PAM for a couple decades. As a result, its product works well in many different environments, although the model may not be as easily replicable in more modern infrastructure.

2) StrongDM: A newer entrant to the space, StrongDM’s SaaS approach takes into account both modern infrastructure but also modern workflows.

3) JumpServer: An open-source alternative to PAM, with more than 23,000 stars on its GitHub listing and over 200 releases – a highly active project. The people behind the project also provide enterprise support.

4) Okta: Of course Okta is known for its user IAM solutions, but it recently introduced a PAM product. While the company is a late participant to this category, its pedigree as the most successful standalone IAM company makes it a force to be reckoned with.

Top Questions to Ask When Deciding on a Privileged Access Management Vendor

Question to ask	What to listen for
How does the solution handle password management?	Password rotation and complexity requirements; secure storage; MFA support; how privileged account password vulnerabilities are addressed.
What session monitoring and recording features are offered?	Real-time monitoring and recording of privileged sessions; whether it captures commands/activity, not just connection metadata; ease of reviewing logs for audits and forensics.
Does it support privilege elevation and delegation?	How temporary elevation is granted; delegation features that assign specific privileges without broadening overall access; flexibility across different roles.
How does it enforce least-privilege principles?	Automated workflows for requesting/granting elevated privileges; granularity of privilege assignment; ability to customize access levels per role.
What reporting and compliance features are available?	Tracking of privileged access and security incidents; predefined compliance templates; customizable reporting; support for standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR.

By asking these technical questions, you can gain insights into the specific features that a PAM solution offers and how well they align with your organization’s technical requirements.

Signs You May Need Workload IAM Instead of PAM

You probably now have a sense that PAM can be valuable. But the real question is, will it solve your biggest problem right now? Here are five considerations that, when evaluating your overarching IAM strategy, may suggest you need something other than a privileged access management solution.

1. You are concerned about your workloads, apps, scripts – and if they are securely accessing your sensitive data and infrastructure.
2. You are concerned with automating secure access between workloads as they spin up and scale – or you introduce new connections to additional SaaS services or APIs.
3. You are looking to implement Zero Trust-style access where conditional access policies are continually evaluated before access is granted.
4. You want to accelerate the move to secretless identity and access workload credentials.
5. You want to fill the audit and compliance gap to show when credentials are issued – and which application used them to access a service.

If these are top considerations for you, then you might consider taking a deeper look at Workload IAM. This technology automates secure workload-to-workload access, instead of focusing on user-to-workload access.

This is valuable because the needs, technology requirements, and integration of securing access between workloads must map to an entirely different workflow than the privileged access workflow that we’ve described in detail here.

Hopefully this article gives you a good anchor to start your access management exploration. If you need more assistance, reach out to us!