Topic starter
12/07/2026 12:23 pm
TL;DR: Privileged accounts are framed as the “ultimate keys” to infrastructure, data, and intellectual property, and the article argues that effective PAM depends on inventory, least privilege, zero trust, strong authentication, lifecycle controls, and continuous monitoring according to Securden. The governance lesson is that PAM is a programme discipline, not a tool purchase, and unmanaged privileged access still drives breach and compliance exposure.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Securden: “The Best Practices for Implementing Privileged Account Management (PAM)”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when privileged accounts are not inventoried and classified?
A: Teams lose the ability to determine which accounts are truly high risk, who owns them and which systems they can reach.
Q: Why do stale privileged accounts increase breach impact?
A: They give an attacker more access than the person's current role would justify.
Q: What are the signs that PAM is failing in practice?
A: Common signs include admin accounts that never expire, service tokens reused across multiple jobs, vaults that store secrets without forcing rotation, and access approvals that are detached from task completion.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every privileged identity Create a privileged account register that covers human administrators, service accounts, application accounts, default accounts and vendor-access identities.
- Apply least privilege to elevated access Remove standing administrator rights wherever the task does not require them and constrain each privileged identity to the smallest set of systems, commands and time windows required for the job.
- Automate credential lifecycle controls Rotate privileged passwords, keys and certificates on defined triggers such as role changes, suspected compromise or account retirement, and make revocation part of the same workflow.
Bottom line: Privileged account management is the control layer that decides how much damage elevated access can do when it is compromised.
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12/07/2026 12:36 pm
Privileged account management has become the clearest test of identity security maturity. An organisation can have strong authentication and still be exposed if elevated access is not inventoried, scoped and lifecycle-managed. The discipline now has to span human admins, service accounts and application identities because attackers do not distinguish between them when looking for durable control points. Practitioners should treat PAM coverage as a maturity metric, not an isolated control.
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.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should security teams audit privileged access across human and non-human identities?
A: They should start with a complete privileged identity inventory that includes administrators, service accounts, API keys, certificates, pipeline credentials, and vendor accounts. The audit should verify ownership, lifecycle state, scope, and revocation logic for each identity. If the inventory is incomplete, the audit will miss the highest-risk access paths and produce false confidence.
👉 Read our full editorial: Privileged account management now defines identity security maturity