Devolutions PAM Solution

Privileged Access Management (PAM) has shifted from a toolset mainly used to improve administrative efficiency—such as managing passwords and secrets—into a core cybersecurity discipline aimed at preventing breaches and credential theft. It addresses the risks created by privileged users and privileged access, which often provide broad, insufficiently monitored reach across critical IT assets, undermining least-privilege principles and weakening individual accountability. Two privileged user categories are emphasized: privileged business users, who access sensitive information assets (e.g., HR, payroll, financial data, intellectual property) through application accounts and business roles; and privileged IT users, who administer infrastructure through system, software, or operational accounts.

Key drivers for PAM include abuse of shared credentials, misuse of elevated privileges (intentional or accidental), credential hijacking by attackers, and risky privilege use on third-party systems. Operational and compliance needs further extend PAM requirements to discovering shared/software/service accounts, continuously tracking privileged account ownership across the lifecycle, managing privileged sessions for administrator efficiency, auditing and recording privileged activity, controlling vendor/MSP administrative access, and managing privileged access to cloud infrastructure and applications.

Because SMBs need PAM but often cannot adopt complex, broad enterprise platforms, the focus shifts to essentials: secure management of shared credentials, secure remote access as baseline privileged session management, and account discovery. Devolutions targets this SMB need with a lean PAM approach centered on a central credential vault, remote session capabilities across Windows, macOS, and Linux, Active Directory integration for role-based access via groups and folder-based organization, automated password generation and rotation, optional private user vaults, and network discovery to identify and bring privileged/shared accounts under control. It supports SSH and RDP, credential injection to hide passwords, mobile access, extensive 2FA options (configurable per user or globally), reporting, and real-time email notifications. Gaps include no session monitoring/recording, on-premises-only deployment, and limited vendor ecosystem and reach.

• PAM manages privileged credentials and the resulting access across an organization’s IT environment.
• Privileged business users access sensitive information assets such as HR records, payroll details, financial information, and intellectual property via application accounts.
• Privileged IT users access IT infrastructure via system accounts, software accounts, or operational accounts.
• Key PAM challenges include shared credential abuse, elevated privilege abuse, credential hijacking, third-party privilege abuse, and accidental misuse of privileges.
• Governance needs include discovery of shared accounts and service/software accounts and continuous tracking of privileged account ownership across its lifecycle.
• Devolutions provides a central password vault that can supply credentials to users directly or in the background when launching remote sessions.
• Integration with Microsoft Active Directory enables using AD groups to implement role-based access control for credentials and remote sessions.
• Devolutions supports SSH and RDP and can operate across different networks, including VPN-based access patterns.
• Devolutions supports multiple two-factor authentication methods, including Duo Security, Google Authenticator, YubiKey, and RADIUS.
• Devolutions PAM does not yet include session monitoring and recording and is offered only as an on-premises solution.

• “Once considered a technology option for optimizing administrative efficiency by managing passwords and other secrets, PAM has evolved into a set of crucial technologies for preventing security breaches and credential thefts.”
• “The privileged nature of these accounts provides their users with an unrestricted and often unmonitored access across the organization’s IT assets.”
• “Privileged accounts pose significant threat to the overall security posture of an organization because of their heightened level of access to sensitive data and critical operations.”
• “PAM is essential to all types of companies, well-beyond the large businesses.”
• “While they need PAM, their focus… must be on some essential capabilities.”
• “Devolutions focuses on a more light-weight PAM approach… plus adding additional features.”
• “Providing a lean PAM is essential for success in SMB organizations, because these are rarely able to deploy and maintain complex infrastructures.”
• “Credentials can be injected into these sessions, thus hiding the password from the administrators.”
• “An interesting capability is that 2FA can be activated individually per user or centrally for all users.”
• “Devolutions PAM is an interesting offering that is well-targeted at the SMB companies, where it provides a good baseline set of PAM features that can be rolled out and managed easily.”