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25/06/2026 3:14 pm
TL;DR: Privileged access management tools still secure credentials, but they do not answer who should have access, why they have it, or when it should expire, according to SecurEnds. Privileged access governance adds review, justification, and cleanup controls that PAM alone cannot provide, especially across cloud, SaaS, and hybrid estates.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by SecurEnds: privileged access governance and why PAM alone is not enough
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when privileged access management is used without governance?
A: PAM without governance can show that privileged access exists and that sessions were recorded, but it cannot explain whether the access is still justified.
Q: Why do privileged accounts create so much audit and security risk?
A: Privileged accounts are risky because they concentrate broad system authority in identities that often outlive the business reason for their existence.
Q: How do organisations know whether privileged access controls are actually working?
A: Look for evidence that access is being removed as often as it is being granted, that entitlement owners are approving renewals, and that dormant accounts are being cleared out after lifecycle events.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every privileged entitlement to an owner and justification Build an entitlement inventory that records who approved the access, why it was granted, and the business role it supports.
- Run recurring privileged access certification campaigns Use scheduled review cycles for admin, root, and service accounts so access is revalidated against current business need.
- Separate session evidence from entitlement legitimacy Use PAM logs to confirm activity and governance workflows to confirm whether the access should remain.
What's in the full article
SecurEnds's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A practical breakdown of how privileged access governance sits alongside PAM without replacing vaulting, session recording, or password rotation.
- Examples of how auto-reviews and policy-based cleanup are applied to admin, root, and dormant accounts in day-to-day operations.
- The article's own comparison of PAM versus governance for audit readiness, role change cleanup, and access recertification.
- SecurEnds's framing of why legacy privileged access tools fall short in mergers, insider-risk reviews, and financial audits.
👉 Read SecurEnds's analysis of privileged access governance and PAM gaps →
Privileged access governance: what PAM tools still miss?
Explore further
25/06/2026 4:38 pm
Privileged access governance is the missing decision layer in PAM programmes. PAM controls how privileged access is used, but governance decides whether it should exist at all, for how long, and under whose authority. That distinction matters because logs, vaults, and session records do not resolve entitlement legitimacy. The practitioner implication is that PAM without governance can prove activity, but not accountability.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 88.5% of organisations acknowledge that their non-human IAM practices lag behind or are merely on par with their human identity and access management efforts, according to The 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report.
- That gap is reinforced by another finding in the same report: only 19.6% of security professionals express strong confidence in their organisation's ability to securely manage non-human workload identities.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when privileged access remains in place after a role change or merger?
A: Accountability should sit with the entitlement owner, the approving manager, and the identity governance function that certifies access. In practice, privileged access left unchanged after a role move or acquisition is a lifecycle failure, so the control owner must be able to show review, approval, and removal evidence.
👉 Read our full editorial: Privileged access governance closes the gaps PAM cannot handle
