Why Privileged Access Management (PAM) Isn’t the Ideal Solution for Managing Vendors

October 08, 2018//Ellen Neveux

Last Updated: December 09, 2020

PAM solutions provide robust capabilities for securing privileged access and sessions but revolve around knowing and managing the identity of individual users within your directory service. This is a great option for managing employees or permanent contractors, but not vendors or third-party users since it introduces both security and efficiency challenges.

Vendor users come and go and the privileges a vendor user needs one week may not be needed the next. Trying to manage the carousel of transient vendor users can make IT teams’ heads spin and leave holes in your network security.

Don’t give your vendors network credentials or try to manage them. Only give them limited, non-network access to what they need to get their job done. Alone, PAM isn’t the right choice to manage vendors, but when it teams up with secure remote access designed specifically for vendor users, it offers a robust solution and efficient platform.

Integrating PAM With Secure Remote Access

PAM and secure remote access work together to automate your vendor provisioning/de-provisioning, provide secure remote access, all while allowing you to take advantage of the advanced credential security and fine-grained access management that comes with the leading PAM solutions.

Capability	Typical PAM Implementation	SecureLink	Integrated SecureLink and PAM Solution
Allows access for vendors without providing network credentials	No	Yes	Yes
Provides multi-factor authentication of vendor users without another tool to be implemented with your vendor users	No	Yes	Yes
Automates the vendor and vendor user management process	No	Yes	Yes
Validates employment status of vendor users	No	Yes	Yes
Audits and records privileged sessions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Provides granular access controls and scheduling	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manages, rotates and injects privileged credentials securely	Yes	Limited	Yes
Provides granular command filtering and canned scripts/commands	Yes	No	Yes

Best Practices When Combining PAM & Secure Remote Access

Whether you already have a PAM solution and are looking to provide additional security and efficiency around your vendor management program, or are simply tired of using insecure and burdensome access methods such as desktop sharing or VPN, add secure remote access and PAM together to make your privileged vendor access struggle a problem of the past.