Why Organizations Need Both IGA and PAM

As organizations develop modern Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategies to defend against advanced cyber threats, it’s essential to implement both Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) as part of a defense-in-depth approach. PAM provides granular control and monitoring of privileged accounts at runtime, while IGA ensures appropriate access is approved, governed and reviewed throughout the identity lifecycle. Organizations need to implement both IGA and PAM because each plays an important role in managing privileged access, authorizing eligibility for Just-in-Time (JIT) access and integrating with existing Identity Providers (IdPs). By combining IGA and PAM, organizations can secure their most critical resources, streamline provisioning and reduce identity-based attack vectors.

Continue reading to learn what IGA and PAM are, how they work together and the benefits of integrating them.

What is IGA?

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) ensures that the right digital identities have appropriate access to systems, applications and data. It combines Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) with access governance to provide full visibility, consistent policy enforcement and auditable compliance across both human and Non-Human Identities (NHIs). At scale, IGA plays a key role in automating identity-related processes, including provisioning, deprovisioning and access requests.

IGA solutions help organizations onboard new employees by assigning access based on roles, enforcing least-privilege access through policy approvals and conducting regular access reviews. This policy-driven approach enhances operational efficiency and supports compliance with regulatory standards like HIPAA and GDPR. By governing identities through a unified system, IGA enables organizations to mitigate risks associated with overprovisioned accounts and unauthorized access, especially in complex hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

What is PAM?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) secures, manages and monitors privileged access to sensitive data and critical systems. Privileged users, including IT administrators, developers and service accounts, often have elevated permissions that could lead to major data breaches if compromised. PAM helps organizations grant elevated access to users only when needed and for the duration required to perform specific tasks. By eliminating standing privileges and securing access to sensitive data, PAM reduces the attack surface and helps organizations monitor high-risk sessions in real time.

Modern PAM solutions like KeeperPAM^® provide credential vaulting, session monitoring, JIT access, password rotation and detailed auditing for advanced security. KeeperPAM is a zero-trust, cloud-native platform built for multi-cloud environments, combining password management, secrets management, secure remote access, endpoint privilege management and privileged session control into a unified platform. 

How PAM and IGA work together

While IGA and PAM serve different purposes within IAM, they are most effective when deployed together. By aligning who is approved to have access (IGA) with how that access is granted and used (PAM), organizations gain a holistic approach to securing privileged accounts. Here is how IGA and PAM complement each other:

The benefits of integrating PAM and IGA

Integrating PAM with IGA creates a unified framework for managing identity and access risks at scale. Together, they improve access controls across the full identity lifecycle.

Unified identity security strategy

IGA and PAM enable organizations to consolidate identity lifecycle governance and privileged access enforcement. This minimizes tool sprawl, reduces security vulnerabilities and ensures consistent access policies across users and environments.

Better compliance posture

Regulatory standards, such as HIPAA and GDPR, require full visibility and strict control over privileged access. Integrating PAM and IGA streamlines policy enforcement and simplifies auditing with detailed records of access approvals and privileged session activity.

Lower risk of privilege misuse or credential abuse

IGA ensures users are granted access only to what they need, while PAM enforces how and when that access is used.  Integrating IGA and PAM enables least-privilege access and reduces the attack surface, eliminating standing privileges and preventing credential misuse.

End-to-end visibility and auditability

IGA tracks who has access and why, while PAM provides detailed audit logs of how access was used in privileged sessions. Together, they provide full visibility across the identity lifecycle, which is essential for accurate incident response and ongoing risk assessment.

Enables least privilege and zero-trust enforcement

By combining IGA’s provisioning with PAM’s enforcement of JIT access, organizations can implement least-privilege access and zero-trust security at scale. Every access request is based on contextual data and is time-limited, aligning with modern security frameworks and best practices.

Unify identity governance and privileged access

With advanced identity-related cyber threats on the rise, organizations must have security stacks that support both identity governance and access control. Deploying IGA and PAM not only enhances compliance and operational efficiency but is also a crucial step toward adopting zero trust. For organizations seeking to modernize their privileged access strategies, KeeperPAM offers seamless integration with IdPs and governance platforms, delivering enterprise-grade security while remaining simple and quick to deploy.

Start your free trial of KeeperPAM to secure your organization’s identities and privileged access at scale.