Akeyless
Platform approach
KeeperPAM® is a cloud-native privileged access management platform that unifies enterprise password management, secrets management, privileged session management and endpoint privilege management in a single interface. It is a unified identity security platform that governs access for humans, machines, non-human identities and AI agents from the same Keeper Vault, and adds real-time, AI-powered threat detection across every privileged session. Keeper was recognized in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Privileged Access Management.
Based on publicly available documentation, Akeyless is an identity security platform built primarily around machine identity and secrets management. It unifies secrets management, certificate lifecycle management, key management and secure remote access under one control plane, with a strong focus on DevOps, multi-cloud infrastructure and AI agent identities.
Architecture and encryption
Keeper uses a zero-knowledge, zero-trust architecture. All encryption and decryption happen client-side using AES-256 with PBKDF2 and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Keeper's servers store only ciphertext.
Keeper stores encrypted secrets in its cloud, and access is brokered through the lightweight Keeper Gateway, which requires only an outbound connection over port 443.
Keeper also rolled out quantum-resistant cryptography as an added encryption layer.
Akeyless uses a vaultless architecture built on patented Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC). Rather than storing a full encryption key, DFC splits key material into fragments distributed across regions and providers; the full key is never assembled.
With an optional customer-held fragment, Akeyless cannot decrypt customer secrets, achieving a zero-knowledge model. Akeyless also offers hybrid post-quantum encryption.
Secrets management for DevOps
Keeper Secrets Manager is a fully cloud-based, zero-knowledge solution for securing infrastructure secrets, including API keys, database passwords, certificates and access keys. It supports static and dynamic secrets, automated password rotation and native integrations with GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible and Docker via the Commander CLI and developer SDKs.
Keeper Universal Secrets Sync automatically distributes rotated secrets to AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault and Google Cloud Secret Manager to eliminate credential drift.
Akeyless supports static, dynamic and short-lived secrets with automated rotation, Just-In-Time (JIT) access and secret injection into CI/CD pipelines and IDEs. Its Universal Secrets Connector and Multi-Vault Governance ("Bring Your Own Vault") let teams govern external secret stores such as HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault from a single control plane without migrating the underlying secrets.
Dynamic secrets and zero standing privilege
KeeperPAM supports dynamic, ephemeral credential provisioning and JIT access. Users can be issued temporary credentials with automatic post-session rotation, access resources through connection templates without ever seeing the credential or use ephemeral account provisioning with dynamic role elevation.
Standing privileges are reduced through time-limited access and automatic rotation after access is revoked.
Akeyless generates dynamic, just-in-time credentials that exist only for the duration of a session and are never stored. Machines and workloads authenticate using their native cloud identities (AWS IAM roles, Azure Managed Identities, GCP service accounts), enabling secretless access.
Privileged session management and recording
KeeperPAM provides full privileged session management with end-to-end secure session recording for SSH, RDP, VNC, database and remote browser sessions. Recordings are encrypted and decrypted locally using unique per-session keys.
KeeperAI® adds real-time, AI-powered threat detection that analyzes session activity, classifies risk and can automatically terminate a session when suspicious activity is detected.
Akeyless provides Secure Remote Access with passwordless, JIT access to infrastructure and session activity logging. Its focus is on credential-less infrastructure access rather than full session recording and playback across all protocols, which means auditing might be more problematic.
AI and threat detection
KeeperAI delivers real-time, AI-native threat detection across every privileged session, classifying user actions by risk level and automatically terminating sessions when high-risk activity is detected. All processing happens within the customer's environment, and KeeperAI is compatible with any OpenAI-compatible LLM provider.
KeeperPAM also governs access for Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and enables organizations to secure AI agents through its unified control plane. Admins get full visibility into the number of AI agents in their environment and the number of workloads each is executing.
Akeyless AI Agent Identity Security secures autonomous AI agents with secretless access, and Akeyless Jarvis/AI Insights provides natural-language identity intelligence.
Akeyless's AI focus centers on securing and governing machine and agent identities rather than real-time session threat detection and automated response.
Certificate and key management
Keeper focuses on secrets, passwords and privileged access. Certificates can be stored and managed as secrets within Keeper Secrets Manager, and Keeper integrates with external KMS and PKI systems.
Akeyless automates certificate issuance, renewal and PKI, and provides encryption-as-a-service, tokenization and multi-cloud KMS with HSM integration.
Human password management
Password management is a foundational capability of Keeper's. Apart from storing passwords, passkeys, TOTP codes, secure files and custom records under zero-knowledge encryption, Keeper provides secure password sharing, granular Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC), enforcement policies, encrypted record and folder sharing, SSO integration with any SAML 2.0 identity provider, SCIM and Active Directory provisioning, BreachWatch® dark web monitoring and a Risk Management Dashboard with compliance and audit reporting.
Akeyless includes enterprise password management that offers password generation, storage, sharing and browser autofill for individuals and teams.
Deployment model
KeeperPAM is SaaS-native and fully cloud-based, with backend services hosted in AWS and no infrastructure for the customer to provision, scale or maintain. Customers deploy only the lightweight Keeper Gateway, which requires an outbound connection on port 443, so deployment is rapid.
Akeyless is SaaS-native with a stateless gateway deployed in the customer's environment that communicates outbound only. Its vaultless model means there are no vault clusters to provision, scale or replicate, which simplifies multi-region deployments. Akeyless supports hybrid and on-prem environments and is not available as open-source for teams requiring full self-hosting or code transparency.
Compliance certifications
Keeper holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27017/27018, FedRAMP High Certification, GovRAMP High Authorization, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, FIPS 140-3 and ITAR. Keeper's FedRAMP High Certification makes it one of the strongest options for federal and defense-adjacent organizations.
Akeyless holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27701, PCI DSS, HIPAA, DORA and FIPS 140-2. Akeyless does not currently hold FedRAMP certification or GovRAMP authorization, which may matter for U.S. government and regulated environments.
