What is left to say about PAM that has not already been said? Well in my opinion, quite a lot – as I hope you find out when you join me at the forthcoming KCLive Event, Operationalizing Privileged Access Management.
I talk to PAM vendors all the time and I believe it is a truly exciting space to be covering and some of the innovations that vendors of all sizes are bringing to the table promise real progress in how we manage privilege access in the workplace – and, as you will discover, beyond the workplace.
Punching above its weight
PAM is not by a long chalk the biggest revenue earner in Access Management, but it punches above its weight in contributing to security and governance, and that’s why new vendors are entering the market and private investors are getting more involved. Already this year we have seen the merger of two of the biggest players in the market, Thycotic and Centrify, who hope to piggyback on each other’s strengths to build a super player to take on the current market leader CyberArk. When I spoke to senior people at Thycotic recently they were bullish and excited about the coming together of the two entities which will have solutions for both SMBs and enterprise. We look forward to developments there and its impact on the market.
Capital investment into identity
But private money flowing into the market has been accompanied by movement within the industry as CyberArk, for example, after acquiring iDaptive in 2020 is now heavily trailing its expertise in “Identity Security” in its marketing? At the same time, Okta has added PAM capability to its Identity Management toolkit. Is this a trend, how will it affect traditional PAM? I will be providing some answers at KC Live.
I will also be looking at the impact events and trends are having on PAM, not the least of which was the pandemic and the shift to remote working. The impact of working from home is something we have been talking about a lot recently, including this podcast with my KuppingerCole colleagues, Matthias Reinwarth and Annie Bailey.
I am sure that many remote endpoints are now better protected than they were 12 months ago – but you can also find out why EPM must now be accompanied by Remote Privileged Access (RPA) – which is the same but different.
Millennial focused tech is influencing PAM
The influence of consumer tech and millennial choice is having an impact in enterprise IT and perhaps a little belatedly PAM is catching up. We are seeing much improved UX and UI designs from vendors with button and menus replacing CLI and clunky windows. This had to happen. Such is the need for PAM across the enterprise that we need ordinary users to be able to do some of the management tasks normally reserved for admins (under pressure to perform too many tasks). I will bring you up to date on this and other PAM product developments at the KCLive Event. And don’t worry, I will of course talk a little about DevOps! I am looking forward to meeting you on the day.
