From Vaulting to Vision: A Front-Row Look at the Future of PAM 

As the identity and access management landscape becomes increasingly complex, our customers are under mounting pressure to secure not just human users, but also machine identities, ephemeral workloads, and AI agents—all while balancing regulatory demands, cloud adoption, and a rapidly evolving threat environment.

To provide an analytical perspective to the situation, we invited KuppingerCole Senior Analyst Alejandro Leal to address the situation in our recent Customer Advisory Board.  

Leal offered a compelling analysis of these shifts, illustrating how PAM is moving from reactive control to intelligent identity infrastructure. His presentation offered valuable insights into the technologies, trends, and strategies reshaping PAM—from the rise of non-human identities and agentic AI to the urgent need for quantum-ready, crypto-agile architectures. 

From the very beginning, Leal set the stage by reminding us of PAM’s origins—rooted in vaulting credentials and rotating passwords.

He described how traditional PAM was often seen as a compliance checkbox, operating in isolation from broader identity and security strategies. That foundation laid the groundwork for an in-depth journey across the past, present, and future of PAM—one that resonated deeply with many of us in the audience who’ve seen these shifts play out firsthand.   

Identity Fabric    

The presentation took a turn when Leal described how the rise of cloud, DevOps, and automation redefined privileged access. He emphasized that it’s no longer just humans or administrators accessing systems—APIs, containers, bots, and ephemeral workloads are increasingly demanding identity and entitlement governance. This shift, he argued, is pushing PAM toward a more adaptive, intelligent model: one that’s deeply embedded within what he calls the “identity fabric.” 

This concept was especially eye-opening. Rather than thinking of IAM, IGA, PAM, and CIEM as isolated tools, Leal described a cohesive architecture where these capabilities interact through shared telemetry, policies, and intelligence.

PAM, he said, now plays a central role in this fabric—connecting authentication, entitlement, monitoring, and threat response in real time. 

The Rise of Non-Human Identities 

One of the most compelling topics was Leal’s deep dive into non-human identities (NHIs). He presented NHIs—like microservices and containers—as one of the most urgent and complex identity challenges. Despite their prevalence, governance around NHIs is still fairly fragmented.

He made the case that PAM is now critical for visibility, lifecycle management, and access enforcement across these non-human ecosystems. Many of us found this both validating and concerning—because while the problem is well-known, Leal made it clear how far we still need to go in solving it. 

No conversation about the future of security would be complete without mentioning quantum readiness.

Leal detailed how quantum computing threatens current cryptographic standards, and urged organizations to begin planning for post-quantum cryptography.

He emphasized the importance of crypto agility—not just as a technical need, but as a strategic mindset.

It was clear he believes PAM vendors must build in agility and forward compatibility, and I couldn’t agree more. 

Finally, Leal laid out a compelling vision of PAM’s future: context-aware, risk-adaptive access that replaces static roles with dynamic decisions. His presentation wasn't about fear-mongering or theoretical frameworks—it was a blueprint for how PAM can evolve to meet today’s threats while preparing for tomorrow’s. 

The audience walked away with a renewed understanding of how PAM is transforming—and why organizations need to rethink privilege not just as something to manage, but as something to architect into the heart of our identity strategy. Leal’s perspective was insightful, actionable, and deeply aligned with the work many of us are already doing—and the work that still lies ahead. 

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