TL;DR: PAM best practices now extend beyond admin accounts to service accounts, API keys, third-party access and CI/CD identities, because many incidents begin in unclassified privileged credentials; Soffid’s article argues for visibility, JIT access, session control and automation. The real governance test is whether privileged access can be reviewed, rotated and revoked fast enough to matter.
At a glance
What this is: This is a PAM best-practices article that says critical access must be inventoried, governed and automated across human and non-human privileged accounts, not just traditional administrator logins.
Why it matters: It matters because IAM and PAM teams must treat privileged non-human identities, third-party access and session-level controls as part of the same governance surface, or blind spots will persist.
Context
PAM best practices are no longer just about protecting administrator logins. The article frames privileged access as the organisation’s master key, then argues that modern PAM scope must extend to service accounts, application accounts, shared access, third-party access, API keys and CI/CD identities.
The governance gap is not simply missing control strength. It is missing inventory, missing lifecycle ownership and missing operational consistency across identity types that can all reach critical systems. In practice, the question is whether privileged access can be governed without creating manual friction that teams bypass.
The article’s position is that effective PAM must reduce risk without becoming an obstacle to daily work. That makes lifecycle automation, session visibility and tight scope control part of the operating model, not add-on hygiene.
Key questions
Q: How should security teams audit privileged access across human and non-human identities?
A: They should start with a complete privileged identity inventory that includes administrators, service accounts, API keys, certificates, pipeline credentials, and vendor accounts. The audit should verify ownership, lifecycle state, scope, and revocation logic for each identity. If the inventory is incomplete, the audit will miss the highest-risk access paths and produce false confidence.
Q: Why do standing privileged credentials create more exposure than just-in-time access?
A: Standing privileged credentials create exposure because they expand the time window in which an account can be abused, especially if an attacker or insider gains access. They also tend to produce over-privilege, where users can reach systems they do not need. Just-in-time access reduces that blast radius by issuing credentials only when a specific task and approval justify them.
Q: What signs show that PAM controls are not working properly?
A: Frequent exceptions, long-lived admin accounts, missing session logs, and access that remains unchanged after role or ownership changes all point to weak PAM governance. If teams cannot explain why a privileged entitlement still exists, the control is already failing in practice.
Q: What should organisations do when PAM and IGA are disconnected?
A: Treat the disconnect as a governance gap, not just a tooling issue. PAM handles secure elevation and session control, while IGA governs ownership, approvals and lifecycle changes. If the two are separate, revocation and recertification will lag behind actual access changes, which is where drift accumulates.
Technical breakdown
Why privileged access becomes the real attack surface
Privileged access concentrates control over systems, data and infrastructure, so attackers focus on it because one successful compromise can outperform many low-value accounts. The article broadens that risk beyond human administrators to service accounts, API keys and third-party access, which is the right way to think about privileged exposure in modern environments. Once those credentials are treated as ordinary operational assets, they tend to escape review, ownership and rotation discipline. The technical issue is not only privilege level, but whether the identity is inventoried, constrained and continuously governed across its full lifecycle.
Practical implication: inventory every privileged identity class, not just administrator accounts, and assign lifecycle ownership before trying to tighten controls.
How just-in-time access and least privilege reduce standing risk
Just-in-time access works by making privilege temporary and task-scoped, while least privilege limits the permissions attached to that access. Together, they reduce the window in which a credential can be abused and limit the amount of damage that one session can do. The article also ties this to zero trust by treating each access request as conditional on identity, device and risk context. That combination matters because persistent privilege is the pattern most often exploited when access is overbroad and always on.
Practical implication: move critical access from persistent entitlements to approval-backed, time-bound elevation with narrow task scope.
Why vaulting and rotation need automation, not manual effort
A credential vault centralises and encrypts privileged secrets, but the real control value comes from automatic rotation after use and from preventing the raw password from reaching the end user. The article is explicit that automation is essential because privileged identities are created, changed and retired continuously. Manual processes do not scale well enough to preserve consistency, and inconsistency is where exceptions become exposures. When PAM is integrated with IGA, the same lifecycle logic can extend beyond privileged accounts to broader identity governance.
Practical implication: automate rotation, approval and revocation workflows so privileged credentials do not depend on human follow-through.
Breaches seen in the wild
- BeyondTrust breach 2024: A stolen BeyondTrust Remote Support API key let a China state-sponsored actor reset accounts and reach US Treasury workstations in 2024.
- Meta AI Instagram Account Takeover: 20,225 Instagram accounts hijacked via compromised Meta AI support chatbot with overprivileged access.
Read and download The State of NHI & AI Agent Breach Report 2026, covering 200+ breaches impacting Non-Human Identities including AI Agents.
NHI Mgmt Group analysis
Privileged access is now a lifecycle problem, not just an access problem. The article is correct to extend PAM beyond administrator credentials because critical exposure increasingly sits in service accounts, application accounts, third-party access and CI/CD identities. That makes inventory and ownership the first governance issue, not a secondary reporting task. The practitioner conclusion is simple: if you cannot name the privileged identity, you cannot govern it.
Standing privilege remains the most dangerous operating assumption in PAM. The article’s strongest control logic is the shift toward just-in-time access and automatic credential rotation, because always-on privilege creates a persistent abuse window. In identity terms, this is where least privilege becomes operational rather than theoretical. The practitioner conclusion is to reduce permanence everywhere critical access still exists.
Operational friction is a control failure when it causes teams to work around PAM. The article treats user experience as part of the security design, which is the right signal for maturity. Controls that are too heavy get bypassed, creating shadow workflows outside governance. The practitioner conclusion is to measure PAM by adoption and consistency, not by the number of controls deployed.
Automation is the difference between policy and enforcement. The article rightly argues that manual privilege management does not scale when identities are created, modified and removed constantly. That is especially true when PAM and IGA are integrated, because lifecycle control can then follow the identity across change events. The practitioner conclusion is to align PAM with identity lifecycle automation or accept drift as a permanent condition.
Privileged session monitoring is the governance proof point, not a side feature. Session tracing and anomaly visibility turn PAM from static entitlement control into auditable operational control. That matters for both security response and compliance evidence, because access decisions without session records are hard to defend after the fact. The practitioner conclusion is to treat session oversight as part of the control objective, not just logging overhead.
From our research library:
- Only 36% of health IT leaders say their organisation applies a privileged access strategy consistently across the enterprise, according to Ponemon Institute research.
What this signals
Privileged access governance now has to cover the full identity estate. If the privileged inventory stops at administrator accounts, the organisation will miss the identities most likely to be embedded in pipelines, third-party workflows and automation. The practical shift is from protecting a class of users to governing a class of capabilities.
Just-in-time access changes the control point from possession to issuance. That matters because the risk is no longer only whether a credential exists, but whether it can be created, used and revoked in a tightly bounded session. Programmes that still rely on standing access will continue to carry unnecessary exposure.
Session visibility is the evidence layer that makes PAM defensible. If teams cannot reconstruct privileged activity, they cannot prove enforcement, investigate misuse or show control effectiveness during audit. The result is a programme that may look complete while still lacking operational proof.
For practitioners
- Define the privileged identity inventory Classify administrative, service, application, shared, third-party, API key and CI/CD identities as part of the privileged estate, then assign an owner to each one.
- Replace standing access with just-in-time elevation Use approval-backed, time-limited access for critical tasks so privilege exists only for the session or task that requires it.
- Automate credential rotation after use Rotate privileged passwords and secrets automatically after each use and keep the secret value hidden from the end user.
- Monitor and record privileged sessions Capture session activity and anomalous behaviour in real time so you can prove who accessed what, when and from where.
- Integrate PAM with identity governance Connect PAM controls to IGA workflows so entitlement changes, approvals and revocations follow the full identity lifecycle.
Key takeaways
- Critical account governance fails when organisations treat privileged access as an admin-only problem instead of an estate-wide one.
- The article’s core control theme is consistency: inventory, rotation, just-in-time elevation and session oversight have to work together.
- PAM becomes operationally credible only when controls are automated enough to keep pace with identity creation, change and removal.
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, NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) 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 expands PAM scope to privileged non-human and shared identities that carry excessive access. |
| NHI-01 — Improper Offboarding | The article stresses revocation and lifecycle control for privileged access that must not outlive its use. | |
| Recommendation — Reduce overprivileged non-human access by inventorying every privileged identity and removing broad entitlements. Tie privileged access revocation to lifecycle events so access ends when the task or relationship ends. | ||
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | IA-5 — Authenticator Management | Credential rotation and controlled reuse are central to the article's PAM guidance. |
| AC-6 — Least Privilege | Least privilege is one of the article's core controls for critical account governance. | |
| Recommendation — Enforce authenticator rotation and revocation for privileged credentials under IA-5. Limit privileged permissions to the minimum required for each task under AC-6. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-05 — Access Permissions, Entitlements and Authorizations | The article focuses on managing privileged permissions, entitlements and authorization scope. |
| Recommendation — Review privileged entitlements continuously and remove excess authorizations under PR.AA-05. | ||
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | Section 3.2 — Least Privilege Access | The article uses zero trust to condition privileged access on identity and device risk. |
| Recommendation — Apply zero-trust access checks before granting privileged elevation. | ||
| MITRE ATT&CK | TA0006;TA0008 — Credential Access; Lateral Movement | Privileged account exposure enables the credential theft and movement paths discussed in the article. |
| Recommendation — Map privileged account abuse to TA0006 and TA0008 when hunting for misuse and spread. | ||
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.
- Just-in-time tool access: Just-in-time tool access means granting a testing agent only the permissions it needs for a specific task and only for the time required. In offensive AI workflows, this limits the blast radius if the system behaves unexpectedly or reaches beyond its intended scope.
- Least Privilege: A security principle requiring that every identity, human or non-human, is granted only the minimum permissions necessary to perform its function. Least privilege is the single most effective control for reducing NHI blast radius.
- Session Monitoring: Session monitoring is the capture and review of privileged activity so security teams can reconstruct what happened during administrative access. It usually includes commands, API calls, and login events, and it becomes more valuable when logs are stored centrally and protected from tampering.
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Published by the NHIMG editorial team on July 10, 2026.
Updated on October 11, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group, the independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org