Privileged Access Management: the controls that protect your crown jewels

Privileged Access Management (PAM) covers the people, processes, and technology that govern accounts with elevated rights — domain admins, root, service accounts, cloud root, database superusers, network device enable mode. Without PAM, a single phished workstation routinely escalates to full domain compromise. The Verizon DBIR consistently shows that misuse of valid credentials is the most common action across breaches.

A modern PAM platform — CyberArk PAM, Delinea Secret Server (formerly Thycotic), HashiCorp Vault, BeyondTrust Password Safe, ManageEngine PAM360 — provides four core capabilities. Vaulting stores credentials encrypted at rest with break-glass and dual-control retrieval. Rotation changes passwords and SSH keys on a schedule and after every checkout. Session management proxies privileged logins through a recording layer so RDP and SSH activity is captured. Just-In-Time access grants temporary elevation only for the minutes needed.

For Azerbaijani organizations starting from a baseline, sequence matters. First, eliminate persistent local administrator rights on laptops with LAPS for Windows or its modern successor Windows LAPS, plus equivalent for macOS via tools like Privileges.app or Jamf workflow. Second, vault domain admin and Tier 0 accounts and restrict their use to dedicated Privileged Access Workstations connected only to the management VLAN. Third, vault service account credentials and rotate every 90 days minimum.

Cloud PAM is its own discipline. AWS IAM, Azure RBAC, and GCP IAM allow least-privilege but require dedicated tooling to operationalize. AWS IAM Identity Center with permission sets, Azure AD Privileged Identity Management with eligible-versus-active assignments, and GCP IAM Conditional Access with approval workflows implement Just-In-Time. Pair with detective controls — CloudTrail, Azure Activity, GCP Audit Logs piped to your SIEM with alerts on root usage, sensitive role assumption, and console logins from unusual geographies. Without PAM, ISO 27001 control 8.2 and most regulatory expectations are not credibly met.