Topic starter
22/01/2026 5:22 pm
TL;DR: Many PAM deployments stall because teams start with tooling before inventory, workflow mapping, and governance, and 56% of surveyed IT leaders who tried to deploy PAM could not fully implement it, according to Keeper Security. The practical lesson is that PAM fails as a one-time project and succeeds only when lifecycle, integration, and adoption are treated as part of the control.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Keeper Security: “Is PAM Difficult To Implement?”.
By the numbers:
- 56% of surveyed IT leaders attempted to deploy a PAM solution but could not fully implement it.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when PAM starts after the tooling is already chosen?
A: When PAM starts after tooling selection, teams often discover that privileged accounts, approval paths and operational exceptions were never inventoried.
Q: Why does poor PAM integration increase implementation risk?
A: Poor integration turns PAM into a separate workflow that administrators avoid and help desks must manually support.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about PAM deployment choices?
A: Teams often treat PAM as a technology preference instead of an operating model decision.
Practitioner guidance
- Map privileged accounts before rollout Build a complete inventory of elevated human, service and infrastructure accounts, then map each to the business workflow that creates and uses it.
- Align PAM policy to real workflows Document approval paths, admin exceptions and service dependencies before enforcing vaulting or session controls so the policy matches how work is actually done.
- Integrate PAM into operational systems Confirm that SIEM, IAM and ITSM integrations are working before broad deployment so alerts, approvals and service tickets stay in one governance flow.
Bottom line: PAM implementation fails most often when teams start with tooling instead of privileged account governance and workflow mapping.
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11/10/2026 1:49 am
PAM fails when governance starts after deployment: The implementation problem is not simply technical complexity, but the order of operations. When organisations decide on tooling before they know which accounts are privileged, they create policy drift between access rules and actual business workflows. That drift is where adoption friction, audit gaps and control exceptions begin.
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: How should organisations phase PAM so users actually adopt it?
A: Organisations should start with the highest-risk systems, pilot the controls with frontline users and explain how the new process changes daily work. Phased rollout reduces resistance because it exposes workflow problems early and gives teams time to adjust before broad enforcement.
👉 Read our full editorial: PAM implementation is hard when governance starts too late