The Evolving Role of PAM in Cybersecurity Leadership Agendas for 2025

Privileged Access Management (PAM) has emerged as a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity strategies, shifting from a technical necessity to a critical pillar in leadership agendas. With the PAM market projected to reach $42.96 billion by 2037 (according to Research Nester), organizations invest heavily in PAM solutions.

Why is PAM climbing the ranks of leadership priorities? While Gartner highlights key reasons such as enhanced security, regulatory compliance readiness, and insurance requirements, the impact of PAM extends across multiple strategic areas. PAM can help organizations enhance their overall operational efficiency and tackle many challenges they face today.

To explore more about PAM’s transformative impact on businesses, read The Cyber Guardian: PAM’s Role in Shaping Leadership Agendas for 2025 by a renowned cybersecurity expert and former Gartner lead analyst Jonathan Care.

What cybersecurity challenges may organizations face in 2025?

The cybersecurity landscape is predicted to be highly dynamic in 2025, marked by evolving attack techniques, new vulnerabilities, and an expanding attack surface. The most acute trends include:

Insider threats

Organizations often focus on external threats, while overlooking risks from within. Insider threats are one of the most underestimated yet impactful cybersecurity risks. Insider risks may manifest in several forms:

• malicious actors may intentionally harm your organization
• negligent employees might carelessly exfiltrate your sensitive data
• external attackers can compromise your employees’ credentials to gain unauthorized access to your systems.

The scope of insider threats becomes even clearer when checking the recent statistics. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, 31% of all data breaches over the past decade have involved stolen credentials. In the last year alone, 68% of all breaches included a human element, with people being involved either via error, privilege misuse, use of stolen credentials, or social engineering.

Third-party vulnerabilities

Reliance on third-party vendors, contractors, and suppliers introduces significant security risks. Threats stemming from inadequate vendor security, software supply chain attacks, and subcontractor vulnerabilities continue to grow more prominent.

High-profile incidents, such as the Change Healthcare data breach, in which 190 million records were compromised due to weak third-party access controls, underscore the need for robust PAM solutions.

Sophisticated cyberattacks

With the evolution of AI and ML, cyberattacks are becoming increasingly targeted and sophisticated. AI enables malicious actors to create more convincing phishing schemes, whereas ML helps them make brute-force attacks more efficient.

Advanced persistent threats represent a particularly insidious class of cyberattacks. These prolonged, targeted attacks are often performed by nation-states or organized crime groups aiming to steal sensitive information or disrupt operations.

The 2024 Salt Typhoon cyber espionage attack on the U.S. telecommunications networks is a prime example. It highlights the persistent threat posed by state-sponsored cyber actors and highlights vulnerabilities within critical communication infrastructures that need urgent attention and remediation.

Hybrid environments

As organizations continue to adopt hybrid work models, managing privileged access across dispersed teams, multiple locations and numerous devices becomes increasingly complex. Hybrid environments make it harder to monitor and enforce consistent access controls.

Employees and contractors may also access corporate systems from unsecured devices and networks, creating gaps in security policies and increasing the risk of credential theft and unauthorized access.

In recent years, many companies tend to switch between on-premises and cloud environments. While offering scalability and efficiency, hybrid environments are more susceptible to misconfigurations, providing more entry points for cybercriminals to exploit.

Compliance pressures

Regulatory compliance remains one of the major challenges for organizations in 2025, as governments and industry bodies continue to introduce stricter data protection and cybersecurity regulations.

Depending on the industry or region, organizations may be subjected to the GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, DORA, NIS2, and others. These cybersecurity standards, laws, and regulations mandate robust access controls, data protection measures, incident response capabilities, and thorough auditing activities.

Non-compliance can result in significant financial, legal, and reputational consequences.

How can PAM help cybersecurity leaders overcome these challenges?

PAM solutions play a pivotal role in addressing these challenges by allowing organizations to control and monitor access to critical systems and sensitive data. PAM solutions like Syteca empower organizations to:

• Enforce the principle of least privilege. Limit user access to only those resources necessary for their job duties.
• Centralize access control. Manage privileged accounts across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments.
• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). Verify the identities of all users accessing your IT infrastructure.
• Grant just-in-time (JIT) access. Provide temporary access to your critical systems, thus, minimizing exposure to persistent threats.
• Automate account discovery. Detect and secure unmanaged privileged accounts within your systems.
• Secure credentials with vaulting and rotation. Prevent credential theft by encrypting and systematically rotating passwords.
• Prevent lateral movement attacks. Stop cybercriminals from escalating privileges and moving across your networks undetected.
• Manage privileged user sessions. Track and analyze user sessions to detect and stop unusual activity.
• Streamline audits. Provide comprehensive activity logs and reports for security audits.

A robust PAM solution ensures that only the right people, at the right time, with the right level of access, can interact with your critical systems — helping you stay resilient and compliant.

Beyond access control: How modern PAM enhances cybersecurity ecosystems

Many modern PAM solutions go beyond traditional access control by integrating with broader cybersecurity ecosystems. Organizations can use PAM solutions along with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, User Activity Monitoring (UAM) platforms, and IT ticketing systems for a more holistic approach to cybersecurity.

PAM + ticketing systems: Enhanced access control

Using PAM in conjunction with ticketing systems helps organizations enforce strict access validation. Before granting privileged access, the system verifies the presence of a corresponding ticket. If the ticket is valid, access is granted. Thus, PAM’s integration with ticketing systems enhances accountability and security by ensuring that access is only granted for authorized, documented requests.

PAM + SIEM: Advanced threat detection

Integrating PAM with SIEM systems allows you to correlate privileged access activities with broader security events. SIEM systems analyze privileged access logs to detect unusual patterns, such as unauthorized access attempts or privilege escalation. If a privileged session triggers a security event, SIEM can automatically alert IT teams.

PAM + UAM: Visibility into privileged user activity

If you use PAM along with UAM solutions, you gain deeper insights into how privileged users interact with your critical assets. Security teams can monitor on-screen privileged user activity, application/web usage, keystrokes, and file transfer operations to detect unusual or risky behavior. When a security event occurs, teams can replay privileged sessions to understand exactly what happened.

With Syteca, you don’t need two separate solutions. It’s a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that enables you to leverage both PAM and UAM functionalities for robust access management, user activity monitoring, real-time alerts, and proactive incident response.

Note: Syteca also integrates with SIEMs, ticketing systems, and SSO software, allowing you to build a cybersecurity ecosystem tailored to your specific needs.

PAM’s strategic benefits for organizations

In addition to helping companies tackle cybersecurity challenges and meet IT compliance requirements, PAM solutions offer some other strategic benefits.

Enhanced operational efficiency

PAM automates routine and time-consuming tasks such as password rotations, access approvals, and privileged session monitoring. This reduces the workload on IT teams, allowing them to focus on higher-value initiatives and strategic projects. Streamlined operations ensure that employees and partners can access critical resources without interruptions, fostering a more productive work environment.

Cost savings and increased ROI

PAM drives higher return on investment (ROI) by preventing costly breaches, minimizing downtime, and automating access management processes. For instance, organizations leveraging PAM often see measurable reductions in the time and resources required to manage privileged accounts.

Reduced insurance premiums

Implementation of PAM solutions demonstrates robust security measures to cyber insurance providers, helping businesses reduce premiums. Insurers evaluate the effectiveness of an organization’s risk management systems, including access controls, when determining premiums.

PAM as a priority for cybersecurity leaders

As cybersecurity threats evolve, the importance of PAM continues to grow. By addressing pressing challenges such as insider threats, strict regulatory compliance, new types of cyberattacks, and the complexities of hybrid IT environments, PAM ensures that organizations remain resilient in the face of dynamic risks.

Syteca PAM empowers organizational leaders to foster security and operational efficiency. With features to combat today’s challenges and meet tomorrow’s needs, Syteca offers a holistic approach to protecting critical assets and streamlining access management.

Book a free demo to take the next step toward a secure, future-ready IT environment.

About the author: Ani Khachatryan, Syteca’s Chief Technology Officer, started her journey in Syteca as a test manager. In this role, she successfully renovated the testing processes and helped integrate development best practices across the company. Her strong background in testing and striving for perfection helps Ani come up with unconventional solutions to technical and operational issues, while her deep expertise in cybersecurity establishes her as an expert in the industry.