Tools that control, monitor, and audit access to sensitive systems for human administrators, DevOps engineers, and operators. PAM was built to protect critical infrastructure from insider threats and credential misuse by privileged users.
PAM tools solve a well-defined problem: giving the right humans elevated access to sensitive systems, with session recording, credential vaulting, and audit trails. They work well for human privileged sessions — an administrator logging into a production database, a DevOps engineer accessing a cloud console. The gap appears when the access request comes from a workload or AI agent rather than a human.
PAM was optimized for a limited number of human administrators operating through session-based access; it was not built for the scale and speed of machine-to-machine authentication — microservices making thousands of API calls per hour, AI agents acting across multiple systems per task, or CI/CD pipelines that need just-in-time access for seconds. There is also a bootstrap problem: even when PAM vaults secrets that workloads need, the workload still requires a “Secret Zero,” a bootstrap credential to authenticate to the vault in the first place. Aembit eliminates that bootstrap requirement by attesting the workload’s identity cryptographically at the moment of access, so the workload never needs to retrieve, store, or manage a credential at all. The two tools operate at different layers and are both present in mature enterprise environments.
Aembit does not replace PAM. PAM governs human privileged sessions, a problem Aembit was not designed to solve.
Organizations running CyberArk, BeyondTrust, or Delinea can use Aembit alongside their existing PAM investment without replacing it. Aembit extends the same policy-driven, least-privilege principles that PAM applies to human accounts to the workloads and AI agents those PAM systems cannot govern. Aembit’s attestation-based audit logs for non-human access can feed the same SIEM and compliance workflows that PAM session recordings already flow into, creating a unified audit picture across both human and non-human identities. This simplifies SOC 2 and NIST evidence collection without adding operational overhead: security teams get a single compliance record covering privileged human access (from PAM) and runtime workload access (from Aembit).
PAM handles human privileged sessions: an admin checking into a production server, a developer accessing a cloud console, a vendor connecting to a sensitive system. Aembit handles the other side of the same environment: applications, services, AI agents, and CI/CD pipelines that need to authenticate to those same sensitive systems without human intervention.
The Uber breach illustrates the gap precisely. An attacker used hardcoded credentials to access Uber’s Thycotic PAM platform, credentials that existed because workloads had no purpose-built identity system and were forced to store static secrets in code. PAM secured the human entry point, but without workload identity governance, the hardcoded credentials gave the attacker a second path in. Once inside PAM, the attacker pivoted laterally across AWS, VMware, and Google Workspace. PAM controlled human access; nothing governed the workload credentials that made lateral movement possible once the perimeter was breached. Together, PAM and Aembit close both sides of the access control problem: human identities through PAM, non-human identities through Aembit, with centralized policy and audit across both.
Scalability is the other dimension where the two tools diverge. PAM is optimized for the relatively small number of human administrators in an environment, session-based, interactive, with approval workflows and session recording. A microservice or AI agent operating at scale makes thousands of authentication requests per hour, has no interactive session, and cannot wait for a human approval workflow. Aembit handles that machine-speed access natively, without adapting PAM’s human-centric model to a problem it was never designed for.
PAM handles human privileged sessions: an admin checking into a production server, a developer accessing a cloud console, a vendor connecting to a sensitive system. Ambit handles the other side: applications, services, Al agents, and CI/CD pipelines that need to authenticate to those same sensitive systems without human intervention. PAM is optimized for the relatively small number of human administrators in an environment – session-based, interactive, with approval workflows and session recording. A microservice or Al agent operating at scale makes thousands of authentication requests per hour, has no interactive session, and cannot wait for a human approval workflow.
Get started in minutes, with no sales calls required. Our free- forever tier is just a click away.
