TL;DR: CyberArk vs. Delinea highlights the same core problem from two angles: traditional PAM can vault secrets, rotate credentials, and record sessions, but it still struggles with onboarding, offboarding, Kubernetes, and modern infrastructure access, according to StrongDM. The bigger issue is that privileged access governance now spans cloud, containers, and third-party workflows that legacy PAM models only partially cover.
At a glance
What this is: This comparison argues that CyberArk and Delinea cover core PAM functions, but traditional PAM still struggles with modern infrastructure, Kubernetes, and lifecycle coverage.
Why it matters: That matters because IAM and PAM teams need controls that govern privilege across cloud, containers, and offboarding workflows, not only vault-and-rotate mechanics.
By the numbers:
- 64% of companies say infrastructure access affects productivity, according to StrongDM's Access-Productivity Report.
Context
Privileged Access Management is the layer that controls who can use elevated accounts, what they can do, and how long access remains active. In this article, the primary issue is not whether PAM can store credentials or record sessions, but whether those controls still fit cloud, containers, and modern access patterns.
The comparison places traditional PAM in a governance context that now spans onboarding, offboarding, third-party access, and hybrid infrastructure. For identity programmes, the tension is between credential-centric control and the wider problem of managing privilege across systems that do not behave like classic servers or databases.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when traditional PAM only covers vaulting and session recording?
A: The control breaks at lifecycle and scope. Vaulting can protect credentials at rest, and session recording can show what happened after access was granted, but neither guarantees that access was appropriate, short-lived, or removed on time. That leaves privilege creep, shared access, and delayed offboarding as recurring governance failures.
Q: Why does Kubernetes expose gaps in legacy PAM programmes?
A: Kubernetes often uses tokens, service accounts, and ephemeral access patterns that do not fit a classic privileged-session model. Legacy PAM can still help with some credentials, but it may not describe or govern the full runtime access path. That leaves container privilege partially visible and only partially controlled.
Q: How do security teams know whether PAM is actually reducing privilege risk?
A: Measure how much privileged access is permanent, how often elevation is task-scoped, and whether session activity matches the approved purpose. If privileged sessions still last far beyond the task or if approvals are routinely broad, PAM is reducing friction more than risk.
Q: What is the difference between privileged credential storage and privileged access governance?
A: Privileged credential storage protects secrets, while privileged access governance controls who gets access, where it applies, and when it ends. A vault can secure credentials without proving that entitlement scope is right. Governance is broader because it includes lifecycle, delegation, and environment coverage.
Technical breakdown
Why vaulting and rotation do not solve modern privilege governance
Vaulting and password rotation reduce exposure, but they do not by themselves define who should have access, when that access should end, or how to govern access across modern workloads. In practice, the control plane becomes credential-centric rather than lifecycle-centric. That means the security team may know where secrets are stored, but still lack a clean answer to whether access is appropriately scoped across servers, databases, clusters, and third-party workflows.
Practical implication: treat vaulting as one control in the stack, not as a substitute for lifecycle governance and scoped entitlement management.
Why Kubernetes exposes the limits of legacy PAM
Kubernetes changes the access problem because privilege is often granted through service accounts, tokens, and ephemeral infrastructure relationships rather than only through named admin users. Traditional PAM products were built around interactive privileged sessions and credential storage, so they often struggle to represent access in container orchestration environments. That mismatch matters because the access path is now distributed across platform, workload, and deployment layers rather than a single login boundary.
Practical implication: map Kubernetes and cloud access paths separately from classic server admin flows before deciding whether PAM coverage is real or only partial.
What session recording still misses in a hybrid estate
Session recording can show what happened during a privileged session, but it does not automatically solve onboarding, offboarding, or cross-tool access integration. If access is not removed cleanly, or if the workflow requires multiple tools and approvals, the organisation still carries privilege debt even when sessions are logged. That is why session visibility and governance completeness are related but not interchangeable outcomes.
Practical implication: use session logs for oversight, but measure whether access removal, role changes, and tool integration are actually closing the privilege lifecycle.
NHI Mgmt Group analysis
Traditional PAM has become a partial control, not a complete privilege model: vaulting, rotation, and session recording still matter, but they no longer describe the full access problem in cloud and hybrid environments. The article shows that the discipline has shifted from protecting privileged credentials to governing privileged access across platforms, workflows, and infrastructure types. Practitioners should read this as a scope issue, not a feature checklist.
Modern infrastructure breaks the assumption that privileged access is session-bound: Kubernetes, third-party access, and cloud tooling distribute privilege across ephemeral and delegated paths. That means access governance cannot rely on a single privileged login event as the unit of control. The implication is that PAM programmes need to be evaluated by how well they cover the access path, not just the secret store.
Privilege lifecycle, not credential storage, is the decisive control boundary: this comparison highlights onboarding and offboarding as the real failure points when access persists longer than the business relationship or task requires. NIST CSF access authorisation and PAM governance both point to the same issue: access that is technically protected but operationally stale still creates exposure. Practitioners should measure whether privilege is removed as reliably as it is granted.
Identity blast radius: traditional PAM reduces some of the damage from credential exposure, but it does not necessarily reduce the number of systems reachable once privilege is granted. When access spans databases, clusters, and cloud services, the blast radius is determined by entitlement scope as much as by secret storage. Teams should treat blast-radius reduction as the actual governance objective.
The market signal is clear: identity security is moving beyond vault-and-rotate models: this article reflects a broader shift toward unified access governance that spans humans, workloads, and infrastructure. That does not make traditional PAM obsolete, but it does mean buyers should test whether a tool can govern lifecycle, integration, and modern runtime access without forcing manual workarounds. The practical conclusion is to evaluate privilege control by coverage, not by category label.
From our research library:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 74% of organizations report identity-related breaches, and privileged access is a leading cause of lateral movement.
- Read next: Cloud PAM and CIEM Guide
What this signals
Identity blast radius is the real PAM test: if a privileged credential can still reach too many systems, the control has merely centralised secrets rather than reduced exposure. Teams should assess whether access boundaries are narrower after PAM deployment, not whether the vault is full.
Lifecycle governance is where legacy PAM most often loses the plot. Onboarding and offboarding are not side concerns here, because the article shows that modern access spans cloud, clusters, and third-party workflows that rarely map cleanly to a single privileged account.
The strongest programmes will separate secret protection from entitlement governance and then measure both. A vault without clean removal, scoped delegation, and environment coverage leaves a large residual attack surface even when session recording is present.
For practitioners
- Audit privileged access coverage by environment Separate classic server and database admin access from Kubernetes, cloud, and third-party workflows so you can see where legacy PAM coverage stops and where modern access governance must begin.
- Test offboarding against real access paths Validate that role changes, contractor exits, and vendor offboarding remove access across every resource type, not just the vault or the primary admin account.
- Measure privilege scope, not only secret storage Review whether privileged users can reach only the systems they need, or whether a vaulted credential still unlocks too broad a set of databases, servers, and clusters.
- Map Kubernetes access to lifecycle controls Document which identities, tokens, and service accounts touch container platforms, then verify that those access paths are governed with the same lifecycle discipline as human admin accounts.
Key takeaways
- Traditional PAM still helps with credentials and sessions, but it leaves modern access problems unresolved when cloud, Kubernetes, and third-party workflows enter the picture.
- StrongDM's article underscores that infrastructure access remains a productivity issue for 64% of companies, which is why governance friction is not just a security concern.
- The control gap is lifecycle coverage: organisations need to know whether privilege is removed, scoped, and integrated across environments, not only stored securely.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and MITRE ATT&CK address the attack and risk surface, while NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 and NIST CSF 2.0 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | The article's core issue is privilege scope that remains too broad in modern environments. |
| NHI-07 — Long-Lived Secrets | Credential vaulting and rotation are central, but long-lived access remains a persistent risk. | |
| Recommendation — Audit NHI privilege scope and shrink any entitlement that exceeds the minimum runtime need. Shorten secret lifetime and revoke any credential that survives beyond its operational need. | ||
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | AC-6 — Least Privilege | The article focuses on whether elevated access is scoped tightly enough across platforms. |
| Recommendation — Apply least privilege to privileged workflows so access is bounded by task and environment. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-05 — Access Permissions, Entitlements and Authorizations | The comparison turns on whether entitlements are managed cleanly across hybrid estates. |
| Recommendation — Review permissions and entitlements across cloud and on-prem systems for drift and excess. | ||
| MITRE ATT&CK | TA0006;TA0008 — Credential Access; Lateral Movement | Overprivileged access and credential handling are the attack paths this article implicitly addresses. |
| Recommendation — Map privileged credential exposure to credential access and lateral movement risk in your detections. | ||
Key terms
- Privilege Access Management: Privilege Access Management is the discipline of controlling and monitoring elevated access to critical systems and data. It governs how privileged accounts, credentials, sessions, and commands are issued, used, recorded, and revoked, so administrative power is limited, traceable, and aligned to policy, risk, and operational need.
- Privileged access lifecycle: Privileged access lifecycle is the full control process for issuing, using, reviewing, rotating, and removing high-risk access. For break-glass scenarios, the lifecycle is short and event-driven, but it still needs ownership, audit evidence, and immediate retirement once the emergency ends.
- Kubernetes Access Management: Kubernetes access management is the control of who and what can interact with clusters, namespaces, workloads, and control plane functions. It combines platform identity, role design, and workload authorization. Because Kubernetes often sits inside larger cloud estates, it adds another layer of access complexity that must be governed separately and consistently.
- Identity Blast Radius: The amount of damage a compromised identity can cause across systems, data, and infrastructure. In NHI environments, it is shaped by permissions, network reach, and administrative capability rather than by the credential alone. Reducing blast radius is a containment strategy that limits lateral movement and data exposure.
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 building or maturing an IAM programme, it is worth exploring.
Published by the NHIMG editorial team on June 7, 2026.
Updated on October 7, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group, the independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org