What is privileged access management (PAM), and do we need it?

Privileged access management (PAM) is a set of tools and practices for controlling the most powerful accounts: administrators, root, service accounts and emergency accounts. Typical features are a vault that stores and rotates admin passwords, check-out of credentials for a limited time, session recording, approval before access, and just-in-time rights that exist only while a task is done. Full PAM products suit larger companies and regulated environments. A small company can cover the essentials without one: an inventory of privileged accounts, separate admin accounts with phishing-resistant MFA, unique local administrator passwords managed by a tool, a bastion host for remote admin access, and a quarterly review. Choose a PAM product when the number of administrators, suppliers or audit demands makes that manual work unreliable. NetSenX is not a PAM tool. It complements one by showing where privileged sessions happen on the network and flagging those that do not match a host's normal as lateral movement, on every plan.

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