What is Privileged Access Governance (PAG)
Recent data breaches reveal a common thread: stolen privileged credentials serve as the preferred entry point for attackers. Most companies find it challenging to track which accounts hold elevated permissions and who has access to these powerful credentials. Detection often takes months, giving intruders ample time to extract data and establish backdoors.
Why PAM Alone Isn’t Enough
While Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions offer security advantages for known privileged accounts, they typically function separately from broader Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) frameworks. This disconnected approach creates blind spots for companies implementing zero-trust security models.
Privileged Access Governance (PAG) fills this gap by extending governance, risk, and compliance capabilities across privileged environments. Instead of managing privileged access as an isolated security domain, PAG integrates it into the broader identity management strategy.
Key Benefits
- Unified Identity Intelligence: Consolidating identity lifecycle management across standard and privileged accounts eliminates dangerous visibility gaps that threat actors exploit.
- Architectural Cohesion: Breaking down operational silos enhances security effectiveness through consistent policy application and comprehensive visibility.
- Regulatory Compliance Efficiency: Centralizing compliance attestation processes reduces audit complexity while strengthening the evidence base for regulatory requirements.
- Access Rationalization: Systematic identification and remediation of excessive, redundant, or orphaned privileged access minimizes the attack surface.
- Conflict Detection: Enforcement of Segregation of Duties (SoD) policies across both standard and privileged access prevents toxic combinations that could facilitate fraud.
How PAG Works
PAG addresses the disconnect between IGA and PAM systems. While IGA platforms contain rich contextual data about users, including job position, department, role, location, and standard application accounts, this context is missing in PAM environments.
PAG connects these systems by bringing privileged credential access into the governance framework. This connection lets security teams decide based on a user’s complete access profile, including any elevated privileges obtained through PAM systems.
Practical PAG implementations use:
- Context-Based Risk Assessment: Evaluating access requests against the requester’s job role and existing permissions
- Time-Limited Privileges: Granting temporary access with appropriate approvals and automatic expiration
- Automatic Lifecycle Updates: Revoking privileged access immediately when job roles change
- Detailed Audit Records: Maintaining complete logs of all privileged access requests, approvals, and usage
Implementation Challenges
Companies adopting PAG must address several technical and operational hurdles:
- Building reliable API connections between IGA and PAM systems
- Creating governance workflows that balance security with business needs
- Developing risk models that incorporate privileged access into overall user risk profiles
- Establishing appropriate review cycles for different types of privileged access
The Road Forward
As attack vectors continue to evolve with lateral movement and privilege escalation tactics becoming increasingly common, companies can’t afford separate governance models for standard and privileged access. Implementing PAG provides the visibility required to counter modern threats.
By extending governance across privileged systems, security teams gain the complete view needed to enforce the least privilege, maintain compliance, and reduce credential-based breach risks. Companies that fail to bridge this gap will maintain critical blind spots, regardless of investments in other security controls.
PAG isn’t merely a technical improvement. It represents a strategic shift toward cohesive, risk-based identity governance throughout the enterprise.
