Why You Need PAM (Privileged Access Management) and How to Choose One: Use Cases, Criteria and Softprom's Portfolio

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a category of cybersecurity solutions that controls who receives administrative access to critical systems and when, what happens during the session, and whether an auditable record remains afterwards. Softprom is a value-added IT distributor since 1999, operating across Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia; its cybersecurity practice covers 90+ vendors with 30+ certified engineers. In the PAM category Softprom supplies Segura and Syteca — both featured in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Privileged Access Management 2026 — and runs pilot projects with its own engineers. This article explains how to tell whether PAM is for you, which tasks it closes, and which criteria to use when choosing one.

Do You Need PAM: Five Signs That You Do

PAM is not for large companies only — it is for companies where at least one of the conditions below holds. Headcount is secondary; what matters is how many people and systems carry administrator rights, and what a mistake in those rights costs.

• External contractors with admin access. Integrators, MSPs or a vendor's engineers log in to your servers, databases or network equipment. Without PAM, each such access is a VPN account that someone forgets to disable.
• Shared accounts. The password for root, sa, admin or the local Administrator is known to several people and has not been rotated in years.
• Audits under ISO 27001, NIS2, DORA or PCI DSS. The auditor asks to see who exactly did what under the administrative account. One of the three of them costs you a finding in the report.
• Cyber insurance. The insurer makes privileged access control and MFA for administrators a condition of the policy — since 2024 this is a standard item on the questionnaire.
• Scale. More than 50 target systems (servers, databases, hypervisors, network equipment, cloud consoles) and more than 10 people with administrator rights.

When PAM is not needed yet. Two or three administrators, no contractors with access, no audit requirements. Here the task is covered by a corporate password manager, MFA on admin accounts and a separate jump server. That is an honest alternative, and we name it to partners up front.

Where the return comes from. For the budget, the recurring cost lines matter more than average breach figures from industry reports: administrators' hours spent on manual password rotation, the cost of audit preparation, separate VPN accounts for contractors, and investigation time when something broke at 3 a.m. and nobody knows who was logged in. On those lines PAM typically pays back within 12–18 months.

Six Use Cases Where PAM Pays for Itself

What to Look for When Choosing PAM

• Target system coverage. Windows, Linux, databases, network equipment, hypervisors, cloud consoles (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), SaaS admin panels, OT. Write the list of your systems before the demo, not after.
• Licensing model and hidden costs. Per user or per target system; whether the database, OS and high-availability cluster are included in the price or bought separately. Calculate the three-year cost, not the first-year one.
• Deployment speed. From a ready appliance in hours to a six-month project with the vendor's consultants. A pilot shows the real figure.
• Session recording format. Video, a text log searchable by command, or both. Auditors value search; investigators value video.
• Just-in-time access and approval workflow. Can access be granted for two hours with a manager's approval, or only permanently?
• Integrations. SIEM (event correlation), ITSM (access tied to a ticket number), identity provider and MFA, vulnerability scanners.
• Agent or agentless. Agentless is simpler to deploy; an agent gives control on the workstation itself (privilege elevation, local admins).
• Local expertise and a pilot. Who will deploy and support it in your country, whether an NFR licence is available for your own lab, and whether you can run a pilot before buying.

PAM Solutions in the Softprom Portfolio

In the Privileged Access Management category Softprom supplies two solutions. Both are featured in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Privileged Access Management 2026. Country availability differs and is listed on each vendor's page.

How to choose between them. If the priority is a secrets vault, rotation, DevOps and certificates on one platform, start the pilot with Segura. If the priority is recording and analysing user actions, a fast start on endpoints and insider-risk scenarios, start with Syteca. In some projects they complement each other.

PAM Pilot from Softprom: How It Works

• Duration: from two weeks.
• Scope: up to five target systems and one external-contractor access scenario.
• What we do: record sessions, review them together with your administrators, verify the integration with your SIEM or MFA.
• Result: a report with a licensing-model recommendation and an effort estimate for full deployment.
• Who works on it: Softprom pre-sales engineers at the customer meeting and in the pilot; deployment through a Softprom partner (reseller or systems integrator) in your country.

For partners: deal registration, NFR licences and a demo environment for your own lab, engineer training.

Frequently Asked Questions

Prepared by the Softprom editorial team. More on the category: Privileged Access Management (PAM): How to Choose a Solution and Where to Buy It.