How To Compare PAM Solutions on the Market

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is an essential part of modern enterprise security, helping organizations monitor and control privileged access to systems with sensitive information. As companies scale their infrastructure across on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments, selecting the right PAM solution can have a long-term impact on enforcing compliance and reducing security risks.

To compare PAM solutions effectively, IT and security teams should assess their organization’s access risks and evaluate core features, including zero-knowledge architecture, secrets management and automatic credential rotation.

Continue reading to learn how to identify your current access risks, what to look for in a modern PAM solution and compare various models to determine what is the best fit for your organization.

Identify your organization’s access risks

Before assessing PAM solutions, organizations must understand their specific access challenges. Many businesses still rely on on-prem, legacy PAM solutions that are difficult to scale across hybrid and cloud-native environments. These outdated solutions fall short in modern workplaces, where infrastructure is decentralized and managed across multiple platforms. According to Keeper Security’s Insight Report on Cloud-Based Privileged Access Management, 60% of organizations using on-prem PAM solutions say it prevents them from reaching their security goals.

To define your requirements for an effective PAM solution, consider mapping potential features to real business outcomes:

• Do you need Just-in-Time (JIT) access to reduce standing privileges? JIT access grants temporary, time-limited access to critical systems and sensitive data, reducing the opportunities for privileged accounts to be misused or compromised.
• Is credential-less access a requirement? Moving from accessible credentials toward approaches that either never expose credentials to the end-user or use ephemeral authentication methods minimizes the risk of credential theft and lateral movement.
• Are you facing challenges with multi-cloud visibility? If your infrastructure spans hybrid environments, you need a PAM solution that offers centralized visibility and consistent policy enforcement across all environments.

When evaluating your organization’s current access risks, consider common access-related challenges that could be threatening your security. Legacy PAM solutions often have complex deployments that demand significant configuration changes and ongoing maintenance, leading to delays and poor adoption across teams. These limitations can result in unmanaged credentials, shadow IT, inconsistent policies and limited auditability across DevOps and IT teams. Understanding these common security gaps is important in prioritizing specific core features of your organization’s PAM solution.

What to look for in a modern PAM platform

Selecting the right PAM solution means matching capabilities with the needs of modern IT environments. Here are the key features you should prioritize when assessing modern PAM solutions on the market.

Zero-trust and zero-knowledge architecture

A modern PAM solution should be built with zero-trust security, where no user or device is automatically trusted and every access request is continuously verified. With zero-knowledge encryption, data is fully encrypted end-to-end, so not even the service provider can access it.

Session monitoring and recording

Session monitoring and recording are crucial features for auditing privileged activity and detecting behavioral anomalies in real time. Look for support across multiple protocols and environments, including RDP, SSH, Kubernetes and database systems. These features support compliance and provide valuable insight for incident response and subsequent investigations.

Agentic AI used for session monitoring and threat response is an even more powerful feature, enabling organizations to set up custom rules for risky sessions and have them automatically terminated.

Password and secrets management

To ensure consistency across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, PAM solutions should securely store and rotate passwords and secrets used by humans and machines. Having passwords and secrets managed in a unified platform reduces the risk of secrets sprawl and helps maintain full control over both human users and Non-Human Identities (NHIs).

Time-limited access with automatic credential rotation

Choose a PAM solution that supports time-limited access with automatic credential rotation to eliminate standing access. Credentials should be enforced with least-privilege access and rotated immediately after use to prevent them from being compromised.

Integration with IdPs and SSO tools

A modern PAM solution should integrate with existing Identity Providers (IdPs) and Single Sign-On (SSO) tools to ensure consistent policy enforcement across your IT ecosystem. Seamless integration simplifies onboarding and deprovisioning, reducing administrative overhead and enhancing security through centralized access controls.

Support for remote browser isolation and BYOD

With distributed workforces and increased use of personal devices, PAM must support secure access from unmanaged endpoints. Look for Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) to grant users access to privileged systems in a secure, isolated environment without exposing internal infrastructure. This adds an extra layer of protection for remote contractors and organizations with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.

Ease of deployment and scalability across hybrid infrastructure

Legacy PAM solutions can be complex, resource-intensive and slow to deploy. In contrast to on-prem solutions, modern PAM solutions should offer cloud-native deployment that scales easily across hybrid infrastructure in days rather than months. Cloud-native PAM solutions are designed for hybrid enterprises because they offer the flexibility, scalability and security necessary to protect privileged access without hindering operational efficiency.

Audit readiness and compliance support

Having built-in auditing tools and automated reporting is crucial for meeting compliance with standards like SOC 2, HIPAA and FedRAMP. Cloud-native PAM solutions are better equipped to meet modern compliance requirements with granular access controls and detailed audit trails.

On-prem, hybrid or cloud-native: What’s right for you?

One of the most important decisions when choosing a PAM solution is determining the right deployment model for your organization’s infrastructure and security goals. Legacy on-prem platforms like CyberArk are infrastructure-heavy and typically come with high costs, ongoing maintenance and long deployment cycles. Hybrid solutions offer more flexibility but still need significant configuration, including VPNs and firewall updates across environments.

In contrast, cloud-native PAM solutions like KeeperPAM^® are designed for dynamic, distributed environments — requiring no inbound network connections, deploying in days instead of months and integrating seamlessly with any IdP or SSO provider. Below is how on-prem, hybrid and cloud-native PAM solutions compare on several core features:

Feature	On-prem PAM	Hybrid PAM	Cloud-native PAM
Zero-trust and zero-knowledge architecture	Rarely supported; relies on static credentials and perimeter-based security	Partial support, but with legacy-based limitations	Fully supports zero trust and zero knowledge with end-to-end encryption and credential-less sessions
Session monitoring and recording	Available but complex to configure at scale	Supported, often requires manual setup across environments	Built-in across RDP, SSH, Kubernetes and databases with centralized logging and visibility
Password and secrets management	Secrets may be stored separately across systems, increasing sprawl risk	May store credentials in the cloud, but lacks full centralization	Unified credential and secrets management across environments, apps and users
Time-limited access and credential rotation	Access provisioning may be manual, and credentials may rarely be rotated	Some automation, but typically requires scripting and extensive maintenance	JIT access with automatic credential rotation to eliminate standing access
Integration with IdPs and SSO	Generally requires custom connectors and complex configuration	Supported but may require frequent firewall updates	Native integration with major IdPs and SSO tools for centralized policy enforcement

Choosing a PAM solution that grows with your infrastructure

Your organization needs a PAM solution that secures access across complex, hybrid IT environments. As your infrastructure evolves, the PAM solution you choose must adapt — expanding into multiple clouds, enabling remote access and following stricter compliance regulations. To prepare for these changes, modern organizations need a PAM solution that deploys quickly, integrates seamlessly and scales with their business needs. Cloud-native platforms like KeeperPAM are designed to meet these demands, offering advanced features like zero-trust architecture, integration with any IdP and centralized secrets management.

Start your free trial of KeeperPAM to modernize your PAM strategy and protect your organization’s most sensitive systems.