Topic starter
22/06/2026 10:00 am
TL;DR: PAM vendors are being judged on AI-driven privilege controls, runtime analysis, and integration depth across human, machine, and AI identities, according to Delinea’s Frost Radar recognition from Frost & Sullivan. The strategic issue for identity teams is no longer vaulting alone but whether privilege governance can keep pace with continuously changing actors and access paths.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Delinea: “Delinea Named a Growth and Innovation Leader in Frost Radar™: Privileged Access Management 2026”.
Key questions
Q: How can teams govern machine identities and AI agents in access reviews?
A: Teams should assign ownership, define review cadence, and include machine identities and AI agents in the same certification logic as human access, but with role-appropriate approvers.
Q: Why does privilege management need to move beyond vaulting in hybrid environments?
A: Vaulting protects secrets, but it does not govern how privilege behaves after access is issued.
Q: What signs show that a PAM programme is too static for AI-era privilege control?
A: Common signs include periodic reviews that do not match execution-time access, isolated session logs that never reach other tools, and persistent exceptions for workloads or agents.
Practitioner guidance
- Audit privilege coverage across human, machine, and AI identities Check whether your current PAM programme explicitly covers non-human and agentic access, not just human administrators.
- Evaluate runtime controls over vault-centric controls Compare your current stack on just-in-time issuance, session visibility, and revocation at execution time.
- Test identity signal sharing across security tools Verify that PAM events can flow into SIEM, SOAR, IGA, CIEM, and endpoint workflows without manual rekeying or report export.
Bottom line: PAM market consolidation is pushing buyers toward platforms that can govern privilege at runtime across human, machine, and AI identities.
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22/06/2026 10:43 am
AI-era PAM is becoming a runtime governance discipline, not a credential repository discipline. The article’s market signal is that the useful boundary of PAM has moved from vaulting to continuous privilege control across humans, workloads, and AI agents. That shift matters because the control point is now execution-time behaviour, not only secret custody. For practitioners, the implication is that PAM roadmaps should be measured by runtime visibility and decision speed, not by how much credential inventory they centralise.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 49% of IT professionals would prioritise improving privileged access management if the decision were theirs alone, according to Netwrix's 2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should identity teams re-evaluate after market consolidation in PAM?
A: They should re-evaluate whether they are buying isolated features or a control plane that can govern privilege across identity types and toolchains. Consolidation tends to reward platforms that reduce operational fragmentation, so teams need to check where their current architecture still depends on manual joins.
👉 Read our full editorial: PAM market consolidation is shifting toward AI-era privilege control