What’s the Difference And Why It Matters

Whether we’re referring to IAM or PAM, there are several factors that make these policies a unique challenge.

Much of this comes down to the proliferation of cloud and hybrid environments.

In traditional IT environments, the vast majority of users accessed information from a desktop computer via a wired network, in a self-contained office.

Often, access management policies simply required robust password controls and a series of firewalls.

Against this backdrop, the distinction between privileged and non-privileged accounts was less important.

Now, users can log in from any device or location. This makes it much more difficult to distinguish between a genuine employee and a hacker.

For that reason, a new set of tools and features have developed across the last decade to effectively achieve both PAM and IAM in cloud environments. This includes many of the features we discuss below.

But there’s another key challenge when it comes to both IAM and PAM.

The proliferation of extended PAM tools makes it much more difficult for hackers to target and access privileged accounts. Often, that means they choose to infiltrate non-privileged accounts first, since they’re much less likely to arouse suspicion.

From there, they can use a variety of lateral movement techniques to survey the environment, identify weak spots, and subsequently elevate their own privileges.

This is an important distinction, because it means the success of your non-privileged access policies can still impact the safety of your most critical assets and information.

However we define the difference between these two terms, therefore, it’s important that organizations combine robust IAM and PAM policies.

Ultimately, neither strategy is totally complete without the other.