More than Security: PAM’s Impact on Your Business Operations, Productivity, and ROI

Privileged access management is no longer just a security tool — it’s a strategic asset that impacts business operations, productivity, and return on investment (ROI). In this article, you’ll discover how PAM in business not only mitigates cybersecurity risks but also streamlines IT operations, reduces costs, and enhances employee efficiency.

Whether you’re a security leader or business executive, you’ll benefit from reading the following actionable insights on how implementing a PAM solution can save you time, protect critical assets, and contribute to your organization’s bottom line.

Why do businesses need PAM?

Privileged access management (PAM) is a critical cybersecurity practice designed to monitor and control access to accounts with elevated privileges within an organization’s IT environment.

Privileged access management is the cybersecurity discipline that governs and secures privileged accounts (such as admin accounts) and privileged activities (such as working with sensitive data).

IBM Security

Why is PAM necessary?

Identity-based cyberattacks account for 30% of security breaches, according to the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2024 report by IBM Security. Privileged accounts are valuable assets for cybercriminals, as they provide access to the most sensitive resources in your IT infrastructure.

Given the cost of data breaches today, more and more businesses are implementing advanced PAM strategies and access management solutions to minimize these cybersecurity risks.

Key factors driving the adoption of PAM

The Research Nester predicts that the PAM Market will grow from $3.49 billion in 2024 to $42.96 billion by 2037, driven by a 21.3% compound annual growth rate. This indicates an increasing demand for effective PAM solutions.

What’s driving this trend?

The 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management (subscription required) outlines the following key reasons behind the adoption of PAM solutions:

The rise in cyberattacks involving privileged credential compromise emphasizes the need for stronger controls. Meanwhile, cyber insurance requirements increasingly mandate the use of PAM tools, with 15% to 25% of first-time buyers citing this as a reason for implementing a software solution. On top of that, Gartner recommends using PAM solutions over standard remote access tools to secure vendor and external IT staff access, driving demand for remote privileged access management (RPAM) solutions.

These trends showcase PAM’s growing importance in cybersecurity and explain why your business needs PAM. In the next section, we’ll explore how PAM benefits organizations.

Common use cases for PAM

Let’s first take a look at the most popular PAM use cases and how PAM strengthens businesses’ security defenses:

Preventing credential theft. PAM protects sensitive accounts by securing credentials. Advanced measures like automated password rotation, encrypted credential storage, and two-factor authentication (2FA) make it difficult for attackers to exploit credentials.

Enforcing the principle of least privilege. By only granting users the minimum access required for their job roles, you can minimize attack surfaces and limit the potential damage from account misuse or compromise. 

Securing third-party access. Vendors, IT service providers, and partners that connect to your network can open doors to external threats or even become threats themselves. PAM allows you to secure remote access by enforcing strict controls, limiting access, and monitoring the actions of external users.

Mitigating insider threats. Employees and contractors know systems on the inside and can have valid access to critical resources, which makes detecting malicious activity challenging. Some PAM solutions can help create audit trails and allow for dynamic privilege management to reduce internal risks.

Streamlining IT compliance. By maintaining logs for privileged user activity and securing access to sensitive data, PAM helps you meet the requirements of many cybersecurity standards, laws, and regulations. Thus, PAM can help your business avoid hefty fines and maintain a good reputation.

Enabling rapid incident response. PAM solutions are great at restricting an attacker’s access and mitigating the threat upon detection. Moreover, PAM tools typically have some built-in user activity monitoring (UAM) functionality which allows you to promptly identify internal security risks and respond to them in real time.

PAM helps you secure sensitive credentials, enforce the principle of least privilege, and streamline compliance efforts. However, the benefits of PAM go beyond security. In the next section, we’ll explore the impact of PAM on business operations and how PAM solutions contribute to your increased business ROI.

Using PAM to drive ROI for your business

In addition to intangible benefits like enhanced security and compliance, PAM solutions also offer measurable advantages that make them valuable business investments.

Let’s now explore how these benefits PAM can optimize your operations and provide a strong return on security investment (ROSI), helping you to justify your security initiatives to your organization’s leadership.

1. Streamlined IT operations

By automating laborious processes, PAM solutions can help your organization eliminate repetitive tasks. Thus, IT and security teams can save hours of manual effort, reducing operational costs and foreign resources. This allows your staff to focus on more important activities, such as innovation and system optimization. The major tasks you can automate with PAM include:

• Password management
• Account discovery
• Access provisioning
• Privileged session monitoring

Additionally, automation can help you reduce human-caused delays and ensure more rapid resolution of access requests and other issues.

2. Reduced insurance premiums

When determining insurance premiums, most cyber insurance providers assess the state of your organization’s risk management system. Privileged access management helps you demonstrate a proactive approach to access management and security as a whole.

This proactive approach minimizes vulnerabilities associated with privileged accounts, reducing the attack surface and the likelihood of breaches. The lower the probability of privilege-related incidents, as determined by auditors, the higher your chances of receiving cyber insurance coverage and significantly reduce insurance costs.

3. Minimized administrator mistakes

According to the 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon, 68% of data breaches involve a human element, while 28% of breaches are caused by human error. PAM allows you to avoid such mistakes with automation and regular user access reviews. Common errors you can eliminate with PAM include:

• Misconfigured access controls
• Irregular password rotation
• Failure to revoke user access
• Unauthorized privilege escalation

Preventing such errors can save your business from potential financial losses and reputational damage associated with operational disruptions.

PAM solutions with monitoring capabilities also increase accountability by allowing you to identify human errors and who is responsible for them.

4. Enhanced employee productivity

The impact of PAM on employee productivity is twofold. The automation of access management and authentication processes allows your staff to access systems, applications, and data without delays and interruptions. This in turn reduces bottlenecks, so employees can complete tasks more efficiently.

When employees are aware they’re being monitored, they’re more likely to focus on their tasks and work more diligently.

5. Reduced audit costs

Security and compliance audits require extensive documentation of access control measures, user access activities, and policies. PAM helps you simplify this process by centralizing privilege management, generating detailed logs on account usage, and monitoring critical privileged user activities.

Thus, you can cut costs on preparing for audits and ensure regulatory readiness without hiring additional resources.

6. Mitigated financial impacts

As privileged accounts have access to the most critical resources, their malicious exploitation can lead to devastating consequences. Although mitigating cyberattacks is one of the basic PAM use cases mentioned earlier, the financial impact it can have on your business is of paramount importance. With the average global cost of a data breach at $4.88 million, according to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, a single breach can undermine an organization’s finances, reputation, and operations.

PAM mitigates these risks by securing privileged accounts with features like password rotation, granular access management, and privileged session monitoring. These measures help prevent unauthorized access, reducing the likelihood of costly breaches and saving you millions.

7. Ensured business continuity

Prolonged system downtime caused by unauthorized access to your IT infrastructure leads to revenue loss and damaged customer trust. Managing privileged access and protecting credentials can help you address issues before they escalate, maintaining uninterrupted business operations and enabling business continuity. Moreover, with some PAM solutions able to respond to threats in real time, your business can stay ahead of potential costly operational disruptions.

Moreover, comprehensive logs of PAM tools allow you to quickly investigate in the event of a security breach, ensuring prompt threat containment and faster recovery.

By combining cost savings, efficiency gains, and risk mitigation, PAM delivers measurable ROI while strengthening security and operational excellence. Reaching these goals, however, requires finding a comprehensive cybersecurity software solution that meets your needs.

The ultimate in PAM with Syteca

Syteca is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that specializes in securing organizations’ inside perimeters against internal and external risks. Depending on your security needs, Syteca lets choose between the following solutions or combine them for the utmost protection:

• User activity monitoring  — Syteca UAM
• Privileged access management — Syteca PAM

Syteca UAM provides you with advanced visibility of user activity and helps you detect insider threats, while Syteca PAM empowers you to granularly grant access to your sensitive assets and proactively secure your organization’s systems.

Driving ROI with Syteca PAM

Syteca’s privileged access management helps you drive your business’s ROI by automating access management workflows, minimizing administrator mistakes, and enhancing employee productivity. Syteca also supports compliance with key IT legal requirements, helping you save costs on cybersecurity audits and consultants.

Primarily focusing on access management and identity security, Syteca PAM provides advanced tools for privileged account control, credential protection, and session monitoring:

How Syteca PAM works

To help you visualize Syteca in action, we’ve prepared a few examples showcasing how it works:

Tailored for on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments, Syteca PAM integrates seamlessly into diverse IT infrastructures, enabling businesses to safeguard sensitive data, streamline access controls, and maintain a proactive security posture in the face of evolving cyber threats.

Conсlusion

Considering the major role of privileged access management in business nowadays, it’s critical to employ a PAM solution like Syteca that goes beyond traditional security measures by delivering measurable financial and operational benefits. By automating tasks, reducing human error, and enabling rapid incident response, Syteca PAM ensures a seamless balance between robust security and business efficiency.

For organizations navigating complex cyber landscapes, Syteca PAM is a smart investment. It not only secures critical infrastructure but also empowers organizations to drive productivity, meet compliance demands, and save on costs.