Privileged access management (PAM)

Privileged Access Management tools help organizations provide secure privileged access to critical assets and meet compliance requirements by managing and monitoring privileged accounts and access.

PAM solutions typically take the credentials of privileged accounts – i.e. the admin accounts – and put them inside a secure repository (a vault), isolating the use of privileged accounts to reduce the risk of those credentials being stolen. Once inside the repository, system administrators need to go through the privilege management system to access their credentials, at which point they are authenticated and their access is logged. When a credential is checked back in, it is reset to ensure administrators have to go through the PAM system next time they want to use the credential.