Topic starter
08/07/2026 6:55 pm
TL;DR: Privileged access management now has to cover service accounts, API keys, SSH keys, and cloud identities as well as people, because identity-based attacks and stolen-credential logins still dominate the threat landscape, according to Infisical. Standing privilege and partial coverage are the real exposure, not password vaulting alone.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Infisical: “The Best Privileged Access Management Solutions”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when PAM only covers human administrators?
A: A human-only PAM model leaves service accounts, workloads, and AI-connected systems outside the same governance discipline.
Q: Why do standing privileges increase breach impact in cloud and enterprise environments?
A: Standing privileges enlarge the attacker’s options because one exposed administrative path can be reused for lateral movement, persistence, or broad operational control.
Q: How can security teams know whether privileged access logging is complete?
A: Logging is complete only when it covers the full access path, including session records, protocol activity, and the privileged actions performed after login.
Practitioner guidance
- Map the full privileged access estate Inventory human admin accounts, service accounts, API keys, SSH keys, certificates, and cloud identities in one control view.
- Remove standing privilege from production access Convert always-on administrative access to just-in-time access with approvals, short lifetimes, and explicit task scope.
- Track non-human identities through offboarding Tie rotation, revocation, and retirement to workload changes, vendor changes, and application decommissioning.
Bottom line: PAM programmes that only cover human administrators leave service accounts and cloud identities as ungoverned privileged paths.
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08/07/2026 7:17 pm
PAM coverage now has to be identity-complete, not account-complete: the old assumption was that privileged risk could be managed by focusing on named administrators. That assumption fails when service accounts, API keys, SSH keys, and cloud identities hold the real access paths. The implication is that PAM scope is now an estate problem, not a role problem, and practitioners need to govern every privileged subject that can act on production assets.
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 should organisations prioritise first in PAM programmes for NHIs?
A: Inventory and ownership come first, because you cannot rotate, monitor, or offboard what you have not found. Once the estate is visible, teams can move to JIT access, secret rotation, and session monitoring for the highest-risk identities.
👉 Read our full editorial: Privileged access management now has to cover non-human identities