---
title: What is Privileged Access Management (PAM)?
description: PAM with PingOne Privilege provides organizations with a modern solution to control, monitor, and secure access to critical resources.
component: privilege
page_id: privilege:privileged-access-management:what-is-privileged-access-management
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/privilege/privileged-access-management/what-is-privileged-access-management.html
revdate: February 16, 2026
section_ids:
  core-capabilities-of-pam: Core capabilities of PAM
  pam-before-and-after-pingone-privilege: PAM before and after PingOne Privilege
---

# What is Privileged Access Management (PAM)?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) with PingOne Privilege provides organizations with a modern solution to control, monitor, and secure access to critical resources. It ensures secure just-in-time access through dynamic permissions, centralized policy enforcement, and strong device and user identity, helping organizations reduce risk and meet regulatory requirements.

## Core capabilities of PAM

PingOne Privilege provides the following core capabilities for effective privileged access management:

* Centralized management of privileged access for cloud and on-premises resources

* Just-in-time (JIT) access with temporary, auto-expiring credentials

* Fine-grained policy enforcement and least-privilege access controls

* Credential lifecycle automation and rotation

* Strong device and user identity verification

* Comprehensive audit logging and activity monitoring

* Support for both human and workload (machine) identities

## PAM before and after PingOne Privilege

| Assignment                              | Before PingOne Privilege                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 | After PingOne Privilege                                                                                   |
| --------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| AWS, GCP, and Azure roles               | Roles permanently assigned through identity provider.Administrators must manually manage role life cycles on an ad-hoc basis.Roles might have excessive permissions.Identities might inherit incorrect permissions.Access reviews take significant time. | Automatic and manual JIT access.Least-privileged roles.Save time in access reviews.                       |
| Custom roles, permissions, and policies | Time-consuming to implement.Requires significant expertise.Requires continual maintenance.                                                                                                                                                               | Automated.Leverages cloud native APIs.                                                                    |
| SSH, DB access controls                 | Requires many static credentials that must be managed.Creating, rotating, revoking, and tracking credentials is expensive.Employees might share credentials, creating security risks.                                                                    | No static credentials.Passwordless solution.Access using native tools.                                    |
| Kubernetes cluster                      | Complex systems of roles and permissions are difficult to manage.Lack of granular controls.                                                                                                                                                              | JIT granular access control.                                                                              |
| Cloud CLI (AWS, GCP, Azure)             | Long-standing static credentials.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        | JIT access with no static credentials and native tools.                                                   |
| Approval process                        | Policy construction and review are complex.Access reviews are time-consuming.IAM teams are backlogged with lots of tickets.                                                                                                                              | Automated.Users don't have to worry about cloud syntax for policy creation.Decentralized approval system. |