Topic starter
25/06/2026 5:16 pm
TL;DR: Traditional PAM tools are being stretched by secret sprawl, excessive privileges, and the growth of non-human identities and AI agents, according to Saviynt, while Gartner named it a Challenger in the 2025 Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management. The deeper issue is that PAM programmes now have to govern both human privilege and machine-issued access paths at once.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Saviynt: “Saviynt Named a Challenger in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Privileged Access Management”.
Key questions
Q: How should security teams govern privileged access as NHI use expands?
A: Treat privileged access as a lifecycle issue, not a credential vault problem.
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.
Q: What breaks when AI agents are given broad standing access?
A: Broad standing access breaks governance because the agent can move from one task to another without a fresh authorization check.
Practitioner guidance
- Map privileged access by actor type Separate human administrators, service accounts, third-party accounts, and AI agents in your access inventory so privilege scope, ownership, and review cadence can differ by subject.
- Reduce standing privilege for NHIs Replace persistent elevated access with just-in-time issuance where possible, and require explicit expiry for secrets and delegated tokens that support workloads or automation.
- Audit inherited access paths Look for application roles, automation defaults, and platform-linked permissions that give NHIs access beyond the minimum needed for the task.
Bottom line: Traditional PAM assumptions weaken when NHIs and AI agents become core access subjects rather than edge cases.
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This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
This topic was modified 2 days ago 2 times by NHI Mgmt Group
25/06/2026 5:51 pm
PAM is being forced to become an identity governance control plane, not a session wrapper. The article captures a structural change: privileged access is no longer confined to interactive admin use. When NHIs dominate operational access, PAM has to govern credential issuance, scope, and accountability across actors that do not follow human login patterns. Practitioners should treat this as a programme design shift, not a feature gap.
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: Should organisations use PAM and NHI governance together?
A: Yes. PAM should continue to manage human privileged sessions, while NHI governance should handle machine identity discovery, ownership, rotation, and retirement. The two control sets overlap in the privileged domain but solve different identity problems, so using only one leaves blind spots.
👉 Read our full editorial: Saviynt’s PAM challenger status signals a broader NHI shift
This post was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group