PAM Solutions by Industry: How to Choose the Right Platform?
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
FINANCIAL SERVICES | HEALTHCARE | MANUDACTURING | SAAS
Choosing a Privileged Access Management (PAM) platform sounds straightforward — until you realize how different security priorities look from one industry to another. A bank preparing for a SOX audit is solving a very different problem than a SaaS startup pushing daily code releases. Teams in regulated sectors focus on different things. Some are all about keeping super-detailed audit trails, others prioritize locking down endpoints, and a few really care about keeping their deployment speed fast.
There's no one "perfect" PAM solution for everyone. The right fit really depends on a few things, like how much regulatory pressure you're under, how complex your operations are, how good your internal security is, and how well your team can handle change.
Below is a practical breakdown of recommended PAM approaches by industry — including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, technology, and mid-market organizations. Instead of comparing feature checklists, this guide looks at what actually drives decisions in the field:
compliance expectations
implementation effort
integration realities
long-term sustainability
If you’re evaluating PAM and trying to translate vendor messaging into something that fits your environment, this should help ground the conversation.
FINANCIAL SERVICES AND BANKING
In financial services, privileged access is a huge deal for keeping regulatory trust. Banks and other financial institutions are constantly under the microscope with audits, so they need to be able to fully track and explain every administrative move after the fact. This audit pressure really drives how security teams handle PAM—it's not just about protecting systems, but also making sure the institution can pass those audits, keep customers happy, and avoid getting hit with big fines.
CyberArk Privilege Cloud is the go-to solution for nailing those tough regulatory requirements like PCI-DSS, SOX, and GLBA.
Why?
Because its compliance features are seriously next-level—think mandatory session recording and super-detailed audit trails. Auditors love it, and its features for digging into session forensics during an incident, plus the identity analytics for catching insider threats, really make it stand out from the crowd. The cost is justified by compliance confidence and reduced audit friction [3].
How We'll Get This Done and When:
Main Deployment Steps and Rough Schedule:
Roll out Privileged Session Management (PSM):Â We'll get PSM up and running so we can fully audit all access to the banking network.
Hook up Security Information and Event Management (SIEM):Â We need to connect this with SIEM platforms (like Splunk or ELK) for non-stop, real-time threat spotting and monitoring.
Turn on Behavioral Anomaly Detection:Â We'll switch on Cortex Analytics to keep an eye on user behavior and flag anything that looks sketchy or out of the ordinary.
Total Timeframe:Â We're looking at about 12 to 16 weeks to wrap this whole project up.
HEALTHCARE (HIPAA/HITECH)
Managing privileged access (PAM) in healthcare is a tricky balancing act. You need super tight security, but you absolutely can't mess with patient care—it's a seriously sensitive area. Clinical systems need really solid, auditable control over who can access what, but they just can't handle any downtime. Plus, many healthcare organizations have to stick to the "least privilege" rule, which is tough when you're dealing with older systems, shared computers, and often, not enough security staff to go around.
Regulatory drivers: HIPAA audit logging, access controls, data breach notification requirements
Our Top Picks: BeyondTrust Password Safe and CyberArk
Why They're Great for Healthcare:Â Healthcare really needs good records of everything that happens (audit trails) and tough security for all the devices they use (endpoint hardening).
BeyondTrust is a bit easier on the wallet for managing all those endpoints. CyberArk, on the other hand, has some seriously smart tools for spotting and stopping threats from people inside the organization. A lot of healthcare groups actually blend the two: they use BeyondTrust for endpoint stuff and keep CyberArk focused on protecting the really important core infrastructure.
Getting BeyondTrust Set Up:
How we'll do it:Â We need to put an agent on all the clinical workstations and also handle those EMR admin accounts.
What it does best: It keeps an eye on privileged activity live and ties that info right into our EMR audit logs.
How long it'll take:Â We're looking at about 10 to 14 weeks.
MANUFACTURING AND INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS (ICS)
Securing today's manufacturing plants is a whole different ballgame compared to regular IT. Security teams have to protect everything from office computers to the machinery on the factory floor and the Operational Technology (OT), which often doesn't have modern, built-in identity security.
For this industry, the biggest deal with PAM is keeping things running smoothly and avoiding any shutdowns. The main goal is really about neatly separating IT and OT access so production keeps flowing without a hitch, rather than focusing on making the cloud work easier.
Regulatory drivers: ISO 27001, ISA/IEC 62443; critical infrastructure protection
Our Top Pick: BeyondTrust Password Safe
Why it Works for Manufacturing: This is a fantastic choice for manufacturing settings because it's brilliant at managing all those endpoints and plays nicely with everything—Windows, Linux, and all your embedded systems. BeyondTrust is a great match for securing your Industrial Control Systems (ICS), mainly because it can really nail down least-privilege access across all your different machines.
How We're Going to Implement This:
We think this whole thing will take about 8 to 12 weeks, and we're zeroing in on a few main items:
Handling the login info (credentials) for those OPC-UA servers.
Keeping an eye on all the important stuff (privileged activities) happening on the factory networks.
Making sure the IT and OT login details are kept totally separate and organized.
TECHNOLOGY/SAAS (DEVOPS - FIRST)
In the SaaS and tech world, speed is everything. PAM needs to fit right into CI/CD pipelines, cloud setups, and temporary environments without a fuss. Developers want automation, not slow approval steps; if security slows down delivery, it'll get bypassed. So, we usually pick PAM solutions in this space based on how little friction they cause while still doing a good job of tackling the obvious risks.
Regulatory drivers: SOC 2, ISO 27001; rapid CI/CD pipeline compliance
Our top picks for DevOps:Â Delinea Secret Server or StrongDM
These are perfect for DevOps teams! They're super API-focused for secret management, which is key for hooking into your CI/CD pipelines (think GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins). Specifically, Delinea's DevOps Vault and StrongDM's agentless Kubernetes access make secret injection automatic. That means you can keep up that deployment speed without a hitch [2].
Getting Things Set Up (The Cloud-Native Way)
We can usually get these solutions rolled out pretty quickly, often in 4-8 weeks. Since we're using a cloud-native approach, we can be super-efficient, relying on these key methods:
Secret Delivery:Â We use methods native to Kubernetes, either through cool tools called operators (like StrongDM) or by hooking directly into the API (like Delinea does).
Catching Mistakes:Â We integrate secret scanning directly into Git to ensure no one accidentally commits passwords or keys to the code repository.
Secure Access:Â We hand out temporary, short-lived certificates, which are a super-secure way for services to talk to databases and APIs.
MID-MARKET/SMBs
Mid-market companies are in a tough spot: they're big enough to have serious security and compliance needs, but they don't have the huge budgets or staff that the really big players do. When these organizations look at Privileged Access Management (PAM), they're usually focused on fixing urgent, specific problems—like figuring out how to handle shared passwords or quickly addressing an audit finding—instead of launching some massive, long-term identity plan. So, for the mid-market, it makes total sense that things like easy setup and being able to use it right away are way more important than having every single feature under the sun.
Regulatory drivers: PCI-DSS (if processing payments), ISO 27001; budget constraints
Top Picks for Mid-Market Buyers: Delinea Secret Server or miniOrange PAM
For mid-market companies, PAM solutions need to be quick to set up and easy to use, so you don't need tons of outside help. Delinea's cloud platform nails the simplicity factor, while miniOrange's great price is a huge win for IT teams watching the budget.
Summing Up on the PAM Solutions
Picking the right PAM tool is a big, strategic move—not a one-size-fits-all thing. What makes a solution "ideal" really depends on your organization's main priorities. Maybe you're focused on feeling more confident about audits, keeping operations running smoothly, speeding up your DevOps work, getting better control over endpoints, or just quickly shutting down obvious risks without overloading your team.
No matter the industry, successful PAM rollouts always nail a few key things: having clear ownership, setting realistic expectations, and making sure the new system fits right in with how your team already works.
To pick the best PAM solution, you should first nail down exactly what security risks and operational headaches you're trying to fix. Getting this clear is the secret to a smooth selection process and making sure the solution actually sticks. A smart choice now will seriously cut down on future audit stress, plug those security holes, and stop you from having to ditch the platform too soon.
If you’re weighing options and want a practical perspective grounded in real-world deployment considerations, IDMExpress can help you map your industry requirements and operational realities to a platform strategy that’s secure, sustainable, and audit-ready.