Why PAM Needs a Paradigm Shift in 2025

Read full article here: https://www.britive.com/resource/blog/pam-needs-a-paradigm-shift/?soucre=nhimg

Privileged Access Management (PAM) has long been the backbone of enterprise security, relying on vaults, password rotation, and session monitoring to safeguard human administrators and contractors. But the rise of non-human identities (NHIs) and Agentic AI has exposed critical flaws in this traditional model. PAM was designed for humans in the loop, not autonomous agents executing tasks at machine speed.

Today, AI agents act independently, leveraging static tokens, bypassing approval workflows, and operating faster than human oversight can respond. As seen in real-world incidents, a single misfiring AI agent can delete critical databases or disrupt production before security teams even detect the event.

Why the Old Model Fails

• Static Secrets Never Expire: Long-lived API keys and tokens persist indefinitely.
• No Runtime Guardrails: Permissions are granted once but rarely enforced dynamically.
• Oversight Lags Behind AI Speed: AI doesn’t wait for manual approvals; by the time humans intervene, damage is done.

Traditional PAM tools, vaults, session recorders, approval queues, cannot keep pace with the speed, scale, and autonomy of modern AI-driven environments.

The New PAM Model

To remain relevant, PAM must evolve into an identity-first, policy-driven system with controls that adapt at runtime. Key pillars of this paradigm shift include:

• Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP): Eliminate long-lived credentials; issue just-in-time (JIT) access scoped to specific tasks.
• Runtime Authorization: Enforce continuous, context-aware authorization for every action.
• Unified Identity Lens: Govern humans, workloads, NHIs, and AI agents with consistent policies and oversight.

Bottom Line

The future of PAM isn’t vaults and static workflows, it’s real-time, adaptive privilege controls built for environments where AI and NHIs operate autonomously. Organizations that cling to the old model risk falling into the same trap as the Jedi Council—debating while Palpatine (Agentic AI) takes control.

If your PAM still looks like yesterday’s playbook, it’s time for a paradigm shift.