Best Privileged Access Management (PAM) Software

Privileged access management’s main focus is security. PAM ensures that every user interface has been properly investigated and only the appropriate users have the necessary access to sensitive, critical data environments based on their role or job function. PAM also gives security departments the ability to closely monitor all activities and identify problematic behaviors and inappropriate activities and respond to them immediately. As organizations grow, the need for varying levels of privileged access grows as well, as there are increased endpoints, devices, applications, and cloud usage that have increased the threat surface exponentially. A strong privileged access management solution will have protocols in place to detect problematic, suspicious activities immediately and stop them.

Privileged access management tools are software solutions that designate and assign specific protocols to establish effective privileged access management throughout the enterprise. A PAM tool will define security and privileged access, thereby better facilitating a secure ecosystem throughout the enterprise. PAM tools will monitor all access throughout an enterprise and identify any suspicious activity. Additionally, PAM tools will ensure all compliance regulations are being satisfied by closely monitoring all accounts, access, and privileges.

Identity access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) have different, specific, defined roles, however, they do work synergistically together to keep an enterprise system safe from potential cyber attacks by minimizing the overall threat surface.

Identity access management (IAM) is a set of defined protocols used by IT and security teams to manage everyday general users throughout an enterprise. IT security teams have complete transparency and can monitor all access points, including machines, devices, applications, and all users, internally and remotely. IAM can also have a function in maintaining and protecting password management by implementing multi-step sign-in, password strength, and other types of password management (e.g. change passwords regularly, do not allow repetition of previous passwords, etc.)

PAM utilizes the information from IAM and then distributes the level of privilege based on assigned job duties, roles, and responsibilities. PAM will start with a minimum privilege assignment and, as roles and responsibilities change, redefine privilege protocols as needed.

It is important for organizations to use both IAM and PAM solutions working synchronically together to ensure threat surfaces are kept to a minimum. A synchronized, integrated solution will save an organization time and money and make managing all user access throughout the enterprise easier.