In this cloud-first era, numerous risks are associated with excessive privileged access granted to too many user accounts within an enterprise.

Here is our list of the best privileged access management  tools:

1. ManageEngine PAM360 – EDITOR’S CHOICE This comprehensive PAM tool provides strong password vaulting, session monitoring, and integration capabilities, offering real-time auditing and extensive compliance support. It is ideal for mid-sized to large organizations. Runs on Windows Server. Get a 30-day free trial.
2. CyberArk An industry leader in privileged access management with advanced security features, extensive integrations, and strong compliance support. Suitable for large enterprises needing comprehensive protection of privileged accounts. Get a demo.
3. One Identity This system is a flexible PAM solution with strong identity governance, integrations, and intuitive management. Ideal for businesses seeking user-centric privileged access controls.
4. ARCON This service offers a PAM with real-time monitoring, automated workflows, and detailed auditing with a strong focus on compliance management.
5. Heimdal A package that focuses on proactive security with privileged access management integrated into its broader cybersecurity suite, providing threat detection and prevention as well.
6. StrongDM A cloud-native PAM solution providing secure access to databases, servers, and Kubernetes, emphasizing ease of use, scalability, and integration.
7. Teleport This PAM tool offers secure access to SSH, Kubernetes, and web applications, implemented with simplicity, scalability, and strong security.
8. Okta Primarily an identity and access management leader, Okta fortifies PAM with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.
9. Delinea Formed from the merger of Thycotic and Centrify, this PAM provider offers secret management, session monitoring, and least privilege enforcement.
10. BeyondTrust A comprehensive PAM platform has password management, session monitoring, and threat analytics.

As your company grows, managing the increasing number of employees, complex IT stack, and granular access control to critical IT assets can become overwhelming.

Too many users with privileged access to IT devices, applications, and other assets widen the attack surface, creating vulnerabilities for phishing attacks, data breaches, information theft, password sniffing, and many other cybersecurity threats.

Not just external attackers, but even internal personnel may exploit their privileged accounts, posing significant risks to the enterprise.

That’s when Privileged Access Management (PAM) tools come into play!

In this article, we are going to look at the fundamentals of PAM and review the Best Privileged Access Management Tools in the market.

What is Privileged Access?

Before we dive into PAM tools, let us first understand what privileged access is. 

‘Privileged Access’ is when a person’s account has access permissions that allow them admin-level access to critical IT systems and applications. Since privileged access has easy access to sensitive organizational data, cybercriminals often target privileged accounts to find loopholes to break into your enterprise network. 

Sadly, many enterprises do not leverage proper security and access management tools to protect privileged accounts. Many companies don’t even have full visibility into how many accounts have privileged access by default. Mostly, this is quite common for companies that leverage multiple cloud applications and services, where access permissions are allowed to sys admins by default.

Humans as well as devices or applications may have privileged access in an enterprise.

What are Privileged Access Management (PAM) Tools?

Privileged Access Management Tools play a vital role in protecting organizations against privilege misuse, credential theft, breaches, and other such threats. PAM uses processes, people, and technology as a critical part of the cybersecurity strategy to secure, monitor, control, and audit all privileged users and their activities within IT business infrastructure.

PAM is often referred to as PIM (Privileged Identity Management) or PAS (Privileged Access Security) as well. The foundational principle of PAM is based upon the practice of ‘least privilege’ wherein users are only provided the least level of access required to accomplish their job role. This prevents just any user from accessing high-value IT assets and sensitive corporate information.  

PAM encompasses various tools such as VPAM (Vendor Privileged Access Management), shared access password management, Privileged Session Management, and application access management. 

Best practices to implement PAM include discarding default credentials, removing admin permissions, enforcing least privilege, continuously monitoring privileged accounts, etc. 

Commonly, local sys admin, domain administrative accounts, Microsoft AD, etc. are the types of user accounts that require PAM tools.

Benefits of Using Privileged Access Management

Privileged Access Management is a robust solution to manage the entire lifecycle of privileged access within an enterprise. It includes granular access controls, consistent review of existing privileges, constant monitoring of privileged accounts and their activities, behavior analytics, secure credential vaulting, and so much more.

Here are some of the major benefits of leveraging a robust PAM solution for your organization:

• Centralized Control IT infrastructure expands with time, thereby making it difficult for IT teams to keep up with the increasing number of devices, users, applications, services, and other assets. Hence, it is extremely important to implement strategic access controls at a granular level. Privileged Access Management offers complete authority to businesses over their critical IT assets and helps them provision and manage privileged access at a macro level.
• Accountability IT managers must continuously review and approve privileged access to ensure clear accountability. Assign every access request to a valid user account to allow for clear traceability of usage. PAM will enable you to trace administrative processes back to the privileged account.
• 360-Degree Visibility No more disregarding or ignoring privileged accounts with access permissions by default. Leverage time-based logs to record day-to-day activities and prevent misuse of privileged access. Create a detailed KB (knowledge base) for the IT help desk and support teams to help them respond to internal threats and prevent the exploitation of privileged accounts. Get deeper visibility into privileged accounts and monitor which accounts have access to what organizational data.
• Compliance Auditing Leverage PAM as a vital component of your security and risk management strategy. Privileged access control helps you achieve compliance with various regulatory standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, SOX, PCI DSS, NIST, NERC, and other standards. Record and log every user activity linked to sensitive corporate data and the entire IT stack. Create compliance reports for audits that lay out best practices employed within your organization for PAM. 
• Retain Brand Reputation and Customer Loyalty Employ a proactive security strategy with robust mitigation measures against cyberattacks. PAM helps you retain your brand reputation, prevent monetary loss due to data breaches or cyberattacks, and gain customer loyalty.
• Dismantle Various Points of Cyberattacks PAM technology can close the loopholes cybercriminals often use to build a cyber-attack chain, thereby preventing not just external attacks but also internal attacks within systems and IT networks.
• Credential Isolation PAM tools gather credentials of the system admin accounts or privileged accounts and isolate them into a secure repository to log their activities and secure their usage. This siloed approach helps mitigate the risk related to password sniffing or credential theft of admin accounts.
• Eliminate Malware Infection Spreading malware such as SQL injections requires privileged access for installation and execution. Often, organizations that overlook the least privilege principle are likely to be attacked by malware and its spread. 

PAM tools help remove excessive privileges and restrict the number of accounts with elevated privileges to block incoming malware. This in turn also boosts operational performance and reduces the risk of downtime. 

How Does Privileged Access Management (PAM) Work?

Privileged Access Management leverages people, processes, and technology to identify privileged accounts in the first place. After this, comes the process of implementing policies to enforce and monitor Privileged Access Management. 

• Users who need the elevated privilege to execute a particular task must request access to a privileged user account with a precise business explanation.
• PAM tools will reject or approve the request; some of the tools may even be configured in a way to request manager approval. The solution will log the final decision.
• Users with approved requests will gain temporary privileged access till the task is accomplished. 
• From a centralized console, admins can manage critical accounts. Further, PAM tools also leverage single sign-on integration to make it easier for users to access the system without remembering multiple passwords every single time they need elevated privilege. 
• Super-users will be able to quickly identify and resolve problems in real-time with PAM solutions.

The Best Privileged Access Management Tools

1. ManageEngine PAM360 – FREE TRIAL

ManageEngine PAM360, as the name implies, provides deeper visibility into unmonitored and unmanaged privileged accounts. It is a comprehensive solution with contextual integration abilities with which you will be able to centralize management, auditing, and control of the entire lifecycle of privileged accounts. 

Key Features:

• Remote access management through encrypted, password-less gateways
• Credential vaulting with RBAC and AES-256 encryption
• Threat analytics
• Remote session management
• Just-in-time privilege elevation for domain accounts and revoke after a certain period
• Privileged session monitoring with session shadowing capabilities. Record and archive sessions as video files for precise audits
• Leverage AI and ML-driven privileged user behavior analytics to identify unusual user activities
• Context-rich logs and built-in reporting to meet compliance 
• Web-based SSH key and SSL certificate management

The PAM360 solution will encrypt and consolidate privileged accounts into a secure vault with granular-level access controls. Start with a 30-day free trial.

2. CyberArk

CyberArk offers Identity Security with privileged access management. Be it for humans or machines- CyberArk employs robust security for all identities and critical IT assets across your business workflows, applications, solutions, DevOps practices, and hybrid cloud environment.

Key Features:

• Integrates with CyberArk Identity Single Sign-On and Multi-Factor Authentication tools
• Integrates with third-party SSO and MFA (multi-factor authentication) tools 
• Manages Privileged Credentials
• Monitors and isolates privileged sessions
• Remote access to PAM
• Threat detection and response 
• Applies least privilege security controls for the entire infrastructure 

This PAM tool will protect sensitive corporate data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. It does this by managing access permissions, and credentials of privileged accounts, monitoring and proactively isolating activities of privileged accounts, and timely responding to threats.

3. One Identity

One Identity is again one of the best PAM solutions to mitigate security risks and aid businesses with compliance. 

Key Features:

• On-premises as well as SaaS delivery
• Index session recording to make it easier and faster to search for events
• Automated reports to help meet compliance 
• Password vault to control and automate the process of assigning privileged credentials
• Threat analytics to identify suspicious behavior and risky privileged user accounts 
• Employ least privileged access
• Leverage Active Directory bridge for unified policy-based access management across Mac, UNIX, and Linux systems
• Secure remote access to privileged users without using VPN

Not just on-premises, but this PAM tool is available as a SaaS offering as well, which you can use to monitor, analyze and control privileged access across multiple platforms and IT environments. It allows you to employ least-privilege models, limit access via Zero Trust and also provide complete credentials whenever needed.

4. ARCON

ARCON’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution is uniquely offered in sets of various modules, based on different business requirements. 

Key Features:

• Role-based and rule-based temporary access control along with the ‘least privilege’ principle for all systems
• Unified access control with centralized governance to monitor privileged identities from anywhere, be it on-premises, on-cloud, in a hybrid environment, or distributed data centers
• Automatically randomize and change passwords to prevent credential theft
• Location tracking of data to allow for easy traceability back to the privileged user
• Password Vault, Single Sign On, and Virtual Grouping features
• Powerful User Behavior Analytics identifies suspicious conduct of users

It offers a unique risk-control solution in the private cloud to secure all your privileged identities through continuous monitoring and security measures.

It provides granular control over access permissions to help you set up your IT infrastructure as per your terms.

5. Heimdal

Heimdal offers a robust PAM platform that leverages the zero-trust principle, automated defenses, and automatic de-escalation of user rights on risk detection.

Key Features:

• Automatically escalate and de-escalate user rights 
• Full audit trail
• Automatically end privileged user sessions if the threat is detected
• Control the PAM interface on the smartphone, from any location. 
• Monitor and remove by-default admin rights with the PAM tool
• Execute zero trust principle
• Advanced data analytics to investigate incidents 
• Create graphical reports for audits 

It is a fast-evolving platform that offers a multi-layer security suite encompassing PAM along with many other solutions. The PAM tool helps you secure and streamline all access management workflows through a unified console. When combined with other Heimdal products, you can truly employ a robust EPDR (Endpoint Prevention, Detection, and Response) strategy.

6. StrongDM

StrongDM is a unique IAP (Infrastructure Access Platform) that offers faster, intuitive, and audit-friendly access to the IT resources that end-users need. It further helps sys admins with simplifying workflows to meet compliance and security standards seamlessly.

Key Features:

• Integrates with your existing identity provider to manage authentication
• Automates group and user provisioning using a single source of truth
• Least privilege access based on just-in-time, RBAC (roles), or ABAC (attributes) approvals
• Integrates with PagerDuty, Slack, or Microsoft Teams to temporarily provide privileged access
• Secure Zero Trust network
• Connect remotely to any resource, from anywhere
• Record and log all session activities. Automate evidence collection to meet various compliance standards like HIPAA, SOC 2, SOX, etc.
• Replay any RDP, SSH, or Kubernetes session

StrongDM acts as a proxy that unifies authentication, authorization, observability, and networking into a single well-integrated platform.

7. Teleport

Teleport is a modern PAM solution that reinforces developers in accelerating their work and secures your IT infrastructure with modern practices.

Key Features:

• All sessions are recorded and can be replayed
• Zero standing privileges and Just-in-time access
• Authenticate via SSO one time instead of centralized password vaulting 
• Manage privilege escalation requests via JIRA, Slack, and other existing tools
• Deploy and manage Teleport like a cloud-native app Run Teleport like a container and leverage Kubernetes or automated CI/CD pipelines for its management.

It has impressive PAM capabilities such as just-in-time (JIM) access, zero standing privileges, and complete activity logging to aid audits. With Teleport, you can easily implement SSO, RBAC, and MFA by leveraging temporary, identity-based certificates.

Unlike password vaulting commonly used by other PAM tools, Teleport enforces password-less, identity-based, short-lived certificates to directly access IT resources.

8. Okta

Okta is a powerful Identity-powered platform that secures your entire workforce as well as customer identities via Identity Cloud.

Key Features:

• Enforces the least privilege for highly privileged resources without any poor fragmented experiences 
• No need to leverage traditional siloed PAM and IGA tools
• Leverage a single identity-powered solution for PAM (Privileged Access Management), IAM (Identity Access Management), and IGA (Identity Governance & Administration).
• Capture sessions and get visibility into all RDP and SSH sessions
• Manage backdoor access by scanning, importing, and securely vaulting passwords for privileged accounts 
• Privileged access reports
• Easy integrations

Okta PAM offers a unified access and governance management platform for cloud, multi-cloud, as well as on-premises privileged resources. Through a single control pane, you can easily enforce governance and manage access across all your IT stack, resources, and applications.

Okta’s PAM solution is still under development and will be available in the year 2023.

9. Delinea

Delinea’s Secret Server is a fully-featured PAM solution that secures your privileged accounts and is available in-cloud and on-premises. It makes it easier to identify, control, audit, and randomize privileged accounts across any enterprise, regardless of its size.

Key Features:

• Privileged account discovery, built-in reporting, and auditing
• Manage the entire IT infrastructure, apps, and network devices, even in distributed, large-scale environments
• Cloud PAM and on-premises PAM to create easy customizations 
• A centralized, secure vault to encrypt and store privileged credentials
• Rotate credentials, enforce password complexity, and provision/de-provision easily
• Set up RBAC workflow for all third-party requests and approvals
• Implement session recording, monitoring, launching, and proxies

Delinea enforces dynamic access control for human as well as machine identities. Based upon the Zero Trust principles, Delinea ensures everyone has short-lived access to accomplish their jobs. It is faster to deploy and use. 

10. BeyondTrust

Last but not least; BeyondTrust is a power-packed PAM platform that delivers faster time-to-value. It discovers privileged identities and ensures access pathways are highly secure. It enforces access and identity security for seamless management, monitoring, and quick just-in-time access.

Key Features:

• Enforce least privilege across Mac, Linux, Unix, and Windows endpoints
• Manage remote access centrally for all your operators, vendors, and service desks
• Automate management of IT assets and identities across your multi-cloud environments
• ‘Password Safe’ automates privileged password and session management 
• ‘DevOps Secrets Safe’ manages and protects DevOps secrets within environments
• Enforces least and just-in-time privileges 
• Supports AD’s Kerberos authentication and SSO

The robust PAM solution encompasses Privileged Password Management, Secure Remote Access, Endpoint Privilege Management, and Cloud Security Management. 

Conclusion

Privilege accounts are the topmost target of cybercriminals today, as these accounts have elevated privileges and are often unmanaged and unprotected. Once the attackers break into a privileged account, they can easily spread malware, steal credentials, and gain access to your entire network eventually. 

This will not only lead to huge monetary losses but also damage your brand reputation in the long run.

That is why it is extremely important to have your best Privileged Access Management tool in place to mitigate identity-related risks without hindering digital experiences.