Akeyless vs Keeper: what dynamic PAM changes for identity teams

At a glance

What this is: This is an Akeyless comparison of PAM architectures, with the core finding that dynamic, on-demand credentials better fit cloud-native human and machine access than vault-centric models.

Why it matters: It matters because IAM teams need a privilege model that can govern humans, service accounts, and automation without multiplying stored secrets, access paths, and operational overhead.

👉 Read Akeyless's comparison of dynamic PAM and vault-based access models

Context

Privileged access is shifting from human administrator sessions to cloud-native workloads, automation pipelines, and machine identities that do not behave like classic on-prem users. In that environment, password vaulting and rotation alone can leave too much standing access in place for too long.

The article’s central claim is about identity architecture, not feature breadth: whether privileged access is issued as ephemeral, on-demand credentials or managed through stored secrets with session controls. That distinction now affects how teams govern least privilege, secrets sprawl, and cross-cloud access.

For readers looking at the broader non-human identity problem, this is the same governance question raised by modern machine access models covered in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs and the Zero Standing Privilege conversation. The issue is not just control placement, but whether the access model still matches how infrastructure actually runs.

Key questions

Q: How should security teams replace standing privileged access in cloud-native environments?

A: Security teams should replace standing privilege with short-lived access that is issued only when a task begins and revoked as soon as the task ends. The goal is to remove reusable secrets from the workflow, not just rotate them later. That approach reduces exposure, simplifies offboarding, and fits cloud-native operations better than persistent vault-based access.

Q: Why do machine identities complicate traditional PAM programmes?

A: Machine identities complicate traditional PAM because they need access patterns that are automated, frequent, and often cross-cloud. If those workflows still rely on copied secrets or manual session handling, governance becomes a secrets lifecycle problem rather than a privilege problem. Native workload identity and ephemeral credentials are the controls that align better with that reality.

Q: What breaks when privileged access still depends on stored credentials?

A: Stored credentials create a standing exposure window that survives longer than the access need itself. They increase secrets sprawl, make rotation a recurring burden, and leave more artefacts for attackers to target. In modern environments, that means the control model is preserving access for convenience instead of constraining it for security.

Q: Should organisations prioritise JIT access over vault expansion?

A: Yes, if the access pattern can be issued dynamically without keeping a reusable secret in circulation. JIT reduces the time a credential exists, while vault expansion mostly centralises custody of credentials that still need to live somewhere. For teams trying to reduce blast radius, the more important question is whether standing privilege can be removed entirely.

Technical breakdown

Why vault-based PAM struggles with cloud-native identity

Classic PAM was built for long-lived servers, human admins, and relatively stable privilege boundaries. Vault-based designs store secrets centrally, then release them for a session or rotate them after use. That model reduces exposure, but it still assumes the secret exists somewhere before access begins. In cloud-native estates, that assumption collides with ephemeral workloads, distributed pipelines, and machine identities that should not inherit durable credentials just to authenticate. The result is architectural friction between how access is granted and how modern infrastructure actually operates.

Practical implication: assess where your PAM design still depends on stored secrets and separate whether that dependency is technical necessity or architectural inertia.

Zero standing privilege for humans and machines

Zero Standing Privilege means no permanent access remains available before a task starts. Instead of holding a reusable password in a vault, the system issues a short-lived credential only when needed and revokes it after use. That changes the security model from credential custody to access issuance. For machines, the distinction matters even more because access often needs to be machine-native, short-lived, and fully automatable. If standing access remains in the path, the organisation has not removed the privilege, only delayed its use.

Practical implication: treat standing privilege as a design defect in any workflow that can be reissued on demand without persistent credentials.

Machine identity integration and secrets minimisation

Modern machine identity should authenticate through native cloud or workload identities such as service accounts, managed identities, or federated workload frameworks, rather than through copied API keys and configuration files. When a platform still leans on stored secrets for automation, it creates secrets for secrets, which expands blast radius and complicates offboarding, rotation, and audit. The governance question is not whether a tool can broker access, but whether it removes unnecessary secret persistence from the chain. That is why machine-native identity support has become a core selection criterion.

Practical implication: inventory automation paths that still rely on static secrets and prioritise replacing them with native workload identity where possible.

NHI Mgmt Group analysis

Dynamic credential issuance is the right control model for modern privileged access. When access is issued on demand and expires automatically, the programme removes the largest operational weakness in legacy PAM: durable credentials that outlive the task they were meant to support. That matters across humans and machines because the risk is no longer only misuse, but persistence. The practitioner conclusion is simple: PAM should be judged by whether it eliminates standing privilege, not by whether it can hide a password behind a session.

Vault-centric PAM is now a partial control, not a complete governance model. Vaults still have value for some human workflows, but they do not solve the broader identity problem created by cloud automation, ephemeral compute, and workload-level access. The industry is moving toward unified control planes because secrets, keys, and privileged access are converging operationally. Practitioners should stop treating vaults as the default end state and start treating them as one component in a broader identity architecture.

Machine identity has become the forcing function for modern PAM redesign. The moment automation depends on API keys or copied credentials, identity governance inherits a secrets lifecycle problem that was never designed into classic PAM. Native workload identity, short-lived credentials, and context-aware policy are now the practical baseline for cloud-native estates. The conclusion for teams is that privileged access design must follow the runtime reality of infrastructure, not the workflow habits of administrators.

Zero Standing Privilege is increasingly the boundary line between legacy and modern privilege governance. Access that exists before a task begins is now a structural liability in environments where access can be issued dynamically. That does not make every vault obsolete, but it does mean the control objective has changed. Practitioners should evaluate whether their PAM programme removes standing access at the architecture level or merely wraps it in a better user experience.

From our research:

• 54% of organisations are dissatisfied with their current secrets management solution because not all secrets are secured, and 43% cite lack of central management, according to The 2024 State of Secrets Management Survey.
• 88.5% of organisations acknowledge that their non-human IAM practices lag behind or are merely on par with their human identity and access management efforts, according to The 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report.
• For a deeper governance lens, see Ultimate Guide to NHIs, which frames lifecycle, visibility, and access control across machine identities.

What this signals

Identity blast radius: the practical question is no longer whether privileged access is centralised, but whether it can be issued and removed without leaving reusable credentials behind. Teams that still depend on vault custody need to understand how that changes their attack surface, especially as automation scales across hybrid estates.

With 54% of organisations dissatisfied with current secrets management because not all secrets are secured, the market signal is that consolidation alone is not enough. The next phase of PAM is about reducing secret persistence, not merely organising it more neatly.

For practitioners, this points toward a tighter link between privilege governance and workload identity. The closer access control moves to the runtime identity of the workload, the less the programme depends on humans remembering where the secret was stored.

For practitioners

• Map every standing secret in privileged workflows Identify where passwords, API keys, configuration files, and long-lived tokens still support human or machine access. Prioritise the workflows that can move to ephemeral issuance first, because those are the places where standing privilege creates the most unnecessary exposure.
• Separate human session control from machine credential governance Review whether the same access pattern is being applied to admins, service accounts, and automation. Use native identity for workloads where available, and avoid forcing machine access through controls designed only for interactive human sessions.
• Replace copied automation secrets with workload-native identity Target pipelines, orchestration tools, and container workloads that still depend on copied credentials. Where the platform supports it, authenticate with cloud-native service accounts, federated identity, or workload identity instead of persisting secrets in scripts and files. See the Ultimate Guide to NHIs and the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 for control patterns.
• Test whether your PAM model truly removes standing privilege Audit a real privileged workflow end to end and confirm that no reusable secret remains available before the task starts. If access is merely rotated after use, the control has reduced exposure but not eliminated standing privilege. The distinction matters for hybrid and multi-cloud operations.

Key takeaways

• Modern PAM is increasingly judged by whether it removes standing privilege, not whether it can rotate secrets after the fact.
• Machine identity is the pressure point that exposes the limits of vault-centric privilege models in cloud-native environments.
• Teams should evaluate privileged access by secret persistence, workflow automation fit, and whether access can be issued on demand without reuse.

Key terms

• Zero Standing Privilege: A privilege model in which no reusable access remains available before a task begins. Access is issued on demand, used for the specific job at hand, and then removed, reducing the chance that dormant credentials become a standing attack path.
• Dynamic Credentials: Credentials generated at the moment of need and destroyed after use. They reduce the lifetime of access artefacts, which lowers exposure in cloud and automation environments where long-lived secrets are hard to govern.
• Machine Identity: The identity used by software, workloads, services, or automation to authenticate and obtain access. It is governed differently from human identity because it must support high-frequency, programmatic, and often cross-platform access without relying on interactive login patterns.
• Secrets Sprawl: The uncontrolled spread of passwords, tokens, keys, and certificates across tools, scripts, repositories, and teams. It becomes an operational and security problem when organisations cannot confidently inventory, rotate, or revoke every secret that exists.

What's in the full article

Akeyless' full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Architecture-level feature comparisons between vault-based PAM and dynamic, on-demand credential issuance
• Implementation detail on how unified secrets, KMS, and certificate lifecycle management are positioned in the platform model
• Specific workflow examples for cloud, DevOps, and machine identity access that buyers may need when evaluating deployment fit
• The vendor's own explanation of deployment overhead, gateway use, and scaling assumptions

👉 The full Akeyless article covers architecture, workflow fit, and machine identity detail in more depth.

Deepen your knowledge

NHI governance, agentic AI identity, and machine identity lifecycle are core topics in our NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme. If you are responsible for identity security strategy or NHI governance in your organisation, it is worth exploring.