PAM Security Review: Containment Over Compromise

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is the control layer that stops them cold. A security review of your PAM implementation is not optional—it is the difference between containment and compromise.

PAM security review starts with visibility. You need to know every account with elevated rights. That includes local admin, service accounts, root, and accounts buried in automation scripts. Map them. Eliminate unused ones. Rotate passwords and keys. Enforce least privilege for every role.

Next, examine authentication. Multi-factor should be mandatory for all privileged accounts. Integrate with a centralized identity provider. Reject password-only access. Review session logs for anomalies and failed attempts.

Inspect access workflows. Privileged sessions should be brokered through secure vaults or gateways. No direct SSH or RDP into production. Require approvals for critical operations. Terminate idle sessions.

Audit credentials storage. Secrets should be encrypted at rest and in transit. No plaintext in configs. Access to vault data must itself follow PAM policies.

Test monitoring capabilities. Alerts should trigger on unusual privilege activity, off-hours use, or privilege escalation chains. Logs must be fed into SIEM for correlation with other events.

Validate separation of duties. No single user should provision, approve, and execute privileged tasks. Segregate admin domains—development, staging, production—so a breach in one cannot leap to the others.

Run attack simulation. Attempt credential harvesting, vault brute force, and privilege escalation in a controlled environment. Patch every weakness found. Document and repeat quarterly.

A thorough PAM security review is how you prove control, limit blast radius, and maintain trust.

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