CA Privileged Acces Management Suite

Digital transformation is expanding organizations’ attack surfaces through initiatives like digital workplace, DevOps, security automation, and IoT, creating new risks that must be assessed and managed without disrupting business operations. Privileged Access Management (PAM) is positioned as a critical set of controls to reduce risks tied to privileged access, which includes both privileged business users (accessing sensitive information like HR, payroll, finance, and intellectual property) and privileged IT users (administering infrastructure via system, software, or operational accounts). Because privileged accounts often provide broad, sometimes shared and unmonitored access, they undermine least privilege and weaken accountability, making them a high-impact threat vector. Traditional IAM tools focus on standard identities and generally lack capabilities for shared accounts, privileged activity monitoring, and controlled elevation, which PAM tools address through vaulting, rotation, session control, and increasingly analytics and risk-based monitoring.

CA Technologies’ CA Privileged Access Management Suite consolidates a long-standing PAM lineage (eTrust Server Access Control/ControlMinder) with Xceedium-derived capabilities into an integrated platform comprising CA Privileged Access Manager, Server Control, and Threat Analytics. The suite supports physical/virtual appliances, strong virtualization controls (including VMware vSphere and NSX), broad protocol coverage, flexible auto-discovery, and extensive session recording. It offers granular Unix/Linux elevation via agents enabling OS-kernel-level command control, plus A2A password management to reduce hard-coded credentials. Integrations via REST APIs and out-of-the-box connectors support SIEM, IT service management, CMDBs, and identity governance, enabling closed-loop remediation and governance against issues like orphaned accounts and privilege creep. Strengths center on heterogeneous and virtualized environments, mainframe support, and deep command control for regulated industries, while challenges include higher cost for Server Control, early DevSecOps maturity, limited mid-market focus, and frequent bundling with CA IAM Suite.

• Privileged users are categorized into privileged business users and privileged IT users.
• Privileged business users can access sensitive assets such as HR records, payroll details, financial information, and intellectual property.
• Privileged IT users typically receive access through administrative roles using system, software, or operational accounts.
• Key privilege-management challenges include shared credential abuse, unauthorized privilege elevation, credential hijacking, third-party privilege abuse, and accidental misuse.
• CA Privileged Access Management Suite includes CA Privileged Access Manager, CA Privileged Access Manager Server Control, and CA Threat Analytics.
• CA Privileged Access Manager is available as physical and virtual appliances supporting AWS and VMware environments (ESXi, NSX).
• Supported connection protocols include SSH v2, HTTP/HTTPS, RDP, SAML 2.0, VNC, T3270, TN5250, and Telnet.
• CA Privileged Access Manager can control VMware vSphere environments and VMware NSX.
• A single CA PAM appliance is reported to support 2000 or more concurrent recorded sessions.
• CA PAM is not offered in a native PAM-as-a-Service model, though some providers host it on AWS to deliver hosted PAM services.

• “To remain relevant, organizations must reinvent themselves by being agile and more innovative.”
• “Emerging technology initiatives such as digital workplace, DevOps, security automation and the Internet of Things continue to expand the attack surface of organizations as well as introduce new digital risks.”
• “Privileged Access Management represents the set of critical cybersecurity controls that address the security risks associated with the use of privileged access in an organization.”
• “The privileged nature of these accounts provides their users with an unrestricted and often unmonitored access across the organization’s IT assets.”
• “Available Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools are purposely designed to deal with management of standard users’ identity and access, and do not offer the capabilities to manage privileged access scenarios.”
• “More advanced capabilities such as privileged user analytics, risk-based session monitoring and advanced threat protection are becoming the new norm.”
• “A host-based agents approach while adding to overall maintenance, offers unique advantages for customers that require granular command control at OS kernel level.”
• “Text-based search of graphical sessions is not yet supported but tagged violations on a video recording can be searched for.”
• “Some of these capabilities contribute to a functional overlap with traditional anti-malware or endpoint protection platforms deployed by organizations.”
• “Overall, the CA PAM suite makes a natural fit for most large-sized organizations with existing deployments of CA Technologies security products as well as those with heterogeneous and heavily virtualized environments.”