About the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category
What belongs in this category
The Privileged Access Management (PAM) category covers products that protect the accounts that can change systems, read sensitive data or turn off security controls. Typical entries store administrator credentials in a vault and change them automatically, grant administrator rights only when needed and for a limited time, route privileged sessions through a controlled gateway and record them, and remove permanent (standing) administrator rights from endpoints and servers.
Privileged access built for cloud consoles and infrastructure has its own category, Cloud Privileged Access Management, and a product that covers both settings can enter both. Recording sessions as the main job fits Session Monitoring and Recording, and vaulting the secrets applications use fits Secret and Credential Management. A PAM product can also enter Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Related categories to enter
Each category is judged separately, so you can enter a product in every category that matches what it does, with a separate nomination for each. Tailor each nomination to that category's focus. Entering several related categories gives the product more than one chance to be recognized.
How entries are judged
An independent jury of security practitioners, analysts and CISOs scores each nomination on leadership, innovation and impact. Each nomination competes in its category against organizations of similar size and region, so a mid-sized firm is not ranked against a global enterprise. Your entry package, any sponsorship and public votes do not affect the jury's scores.
Strong entries in this category show:
- Leadership — trust in demanding environments: regulated customers, large numbers of servers and administrators, privileged access to operational technology or other critical systems.
- Innovation — a privileged access problem solved in a new way, such as removing standing administrator rights entirely, just-in-time access that administrators accept, or machine and cloud privileges under the same controls as human administrators.
- Impact — results after deployment: standing privileged accounts removed, credentials rotated automatically, privileged sessions recorded, audit findings closed, time to grant urgent access. Give before-and-after figures.
The jury awards Gold, Silver or Bronze, or a Finalist badge, and results are published on this site and announced to the 600,000+ member Cybersecurity Insiders community. Every approved nomination also enters the separate Community Choice award, decided by public votes.
How to enter
A vendor can enter its own product or service, and a PR agency can enter it on a client's behalf. The nomination form has a confidential field for detail that is shared with the judges and not published, such as customer names, deployment figures or roadmap. Deadlines, pricing and entry steps are on the How it Works page.
