Topic starter
03/06/2026 2:24 pm
TL;DR: Traditional PAM is straining under the expansion of service accounts, bots, and AI agents, while manual reviews and static roles are turning into bottlenecks, according to Saviynt’s analysis of KuppingerCole’s Leadership Compass for Privileged Access Management. The deeper issue is that standing-access assumptions no longer hold when non-human identities outnumber humans and privileged activity shifts faster than review cycles can track.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Saviynt: “The Identity Control Plane: Why Saviynt Is an Overall Leader of Privileged Access Management”.
Key questions
Q: How should security teams audit privileged access for non-human identities?
A: Security teams should inventory every privileged identity, including service accounts, contractors, and ephemeral workloads, then review what each identity can reach, how it is authenticated, and who owns its lifecycle.
Q: Why do static roles and access reviews fail for NHIs and AI agents?
A: They assume privilege remains stable long enough to be reviewed, certified, and remediated on a schedule.
Q: What breaks when privileged access is not continuously governed?
A: When privileged access is not continuously governed, standing privilege persists, dormant accounts remain usable, and the attack surface expands across human and machine identities.
Practitioner guidance
- Define privileged access by identity state, not admin title Reclassify privileged access around the actual identity holding it, including service accounts, bots, and AI agents.
- Replace periodic reviews with continuous discovery Instrument privileged access discovery across cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines, and distributed secrets locations so unmanaged paths are visible before review cycles begin.
- Move high-risk access to time-bound issuance Use task-scoped access for administrative and non-human privileges wherever the identity does not need persistent rights, and require expiry by default.
Bottom line: Traditional PAM struggles when privileged access is no longer confined to human administrators and fixed review cycles.
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03/06/2026 2:32 pm
Identity-centric PAM is now a control-plane problem, not a vault problem. The article’s central claim is that privileged access can no longer be governed as a set of isolated credentials or admin sessions. Once service accounts, bots, and AI agents are part of the estate, the real unit of control becomes identity state across the lifecycle. Practitioners should treat PAM as an operating model issue, not just a tooling category.
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.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between Zero Standing Privilege and traditional PAM?
A: Zero Standing Privilege removes persistent administrative access and replaces it with on-demand privilege, while traditional PAM often focuses on controlling how credentials are checked out or stored. ZSP is an operating model, not just a vaulting control, and it is better suited to environments that need tighter blast-radius reduction.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity-centric PAM for NHIs and AI agents is reaching its limit