What Is Privileged Access Management?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions enable organizations to monitor and control the access and activity rights of privileged users. This means monitoring which key businesss systems they can access, as well as what they can do once logged in. Most organizations order their systems in tiers according to the severity of the consequences should the system be breached or misused. Privileged accounts, such as domain admin and networking equipment accounts, provide administrative levels of access to those systems in the highest tiers, based on higher levels of permissions.

PAM solutions help administrators to monitor access to critical business resources and ensure that these high-tier systems remain secure. They do this by storing the login credentials of privileged administrative accounts in a secure repository. This protects those credentials from being stolen. To gain access to these credentials, users must go through an authentication process, which logs that they’ve accessed the account. The authentication and logging process allows organizations clear visibility into who is accessing which account and from where, which in turn helps them to monitor any suspicious or potentially malicious activity, both internal and external.

A layer of PAM security protects critical business systems, but also encourages better governance and compliance with data regulations across the organization.