What does PAM stand for – Privileged Account Management or Privileged Access Management?
Well, this is the acronym used for both terms, but keep in mind these are not exactly synonyms.
Privileged Account Management is part of Identity and Access Management (short for IAM, which I will explain a bit later), focused on safeguarding an organization’s privileged accounts.
On the other hand, Privileged Access Management includes all security strategies and tools that enable organizations to manage elevated access and approvals for users, accounts, applications, and networks.
In a nutshell, PAM lets companies limit their attack surface by granting a certain level of privileged access, thus helping them avoid and minimize the potential harm that may result from external or internal threats.
Privileged Access Management requires multiple tactics, with the key purpose of upholding the Principle of Least Privilege, described as restricting access rights and permissions to the bare minimum required for normal, daily operations of users, programs, systems, endpoints, and computational processes.
The PAM field falls under IAM, where it deals with the authorization processes. PAM enables organizations to gain visibility and easily manage all users` privileges.
To better understand how to implement PAM in your company, I recommend you check out the following articles:
