Day-One Protection Across IT, OT, and Cloud with Extended Privileged Access Management
Reading time: 8 minutes
The digital landscape has evolved significantly, with a notable increase in both the sophistication and frequency of attacks on enterprises. Protecting identities, assets, and data are the top priority rather than accounts. Privileged Access Management (PAM) has been a cornerstone of enterprise cybersecurity, safeguarding critical systems by limiting access to privileged accounts. However, as cyber threats evolve and cloud adoption accelerates, legacy PAM solutions are struggling to keep pace. Enter Xage XPAM—a next-generation PAM solution designed to address the complexities of modern cybersecurity.
In this blog, we’ll explore the limitations of legacy PAM solutions and explain why Xage XPAM is the preferred choice for comprehensive, agile, and future-proof access management.
What You’ll Learn
- The five specific ways legacy PAM tools (CyberArk, BeyondTrust, Delinea) fail modern IT/OT environments
- What “modern PAM” and “Zero Trust PAM” actually mean for OT and IT, not just cloud IT
- A side-by-side breakdown of XPAM vs. traditional PAM architecture, deployment, and risk model
- How just-in-time access and distributed vaulting close the gaps legacy PAM leaves open
- Where XPAM fits for hybrid, air-gapped, or DDIL environments
Why Legacy PAM Falls Short
Legacy PAM falls short because it protects only discovered privileged accounts, relies on a centralized vault as a single point of failure, and takes months to deploy through agent-heavy, discovery-first rollouts. That leaves standing privileges, non-privileged accounts, and OT assets exposed while the vault or its connectivity is intact.
Legacy PAM vendors like CyberArk, BeyondTrust, and Delinea have dominated the market with approaches that are increasingly out of step with today’s hybrid IT/OT enterprise, and recent legacy PAM vendor vulnerabilities have only underscored the risk. Here’s where legacy PAM falls short: proaches that are increasingly out of step with today’s hybrid IT/OT enterprise. Here’s where legacy PAM falls short:
- Lengthy deployment times. Legacy PAM systems can take months to deploy. Discovering every privileged account is cumbersome and sometimes never finishes, delaying protection while the discovery project run
- Limited coverage. Legacy PAM focuses on privileged accounts only, leaving non-privileged accounts and OT assets vulnerable. Attackers now target both privileged and non-privileged identities, and legacy tools don’t cover mixed IT/OT and legacy environment
- Centralized risk. Legacy PAM relies on a centralized vault for credentials and secrets, with heavy reliance on cloud connectivity. If the connection drops, or the vault goes offline or is compromised, it causes a total security breakdown, an unacceptable risk in critical operations.
- Complex management. Integrating on-premises and cloud-based systems is often costly and complex. Legacy PAM slows user adoption, creating friction that sometimes pushes users to bypass the tool entirely.
- High total cost of ownership. Legacy PAM vendors keep raising prices while requiring continuous professional services, driving up total cost of ownership on top of slow time-to-protection.
These gaps leave organizations exposed to ransomware and unauthorized lateral movement, particularly because how standing privileges enable lateral movement gives attackers persistent, excessive access. For a detailed capability comparison, see our competitive brief: Xage XPAM vs Traditional PAM.
What Is Modern PAM for OT and IT?
Modern PAM for OT and IT is Zero Trust PAM that enforces least privilege and just-in-time access across every asset, human and machine, on day one, without depending on a central vault or requiring agents on legacy OT equipment. It extends privileged access controls to third parties, machines, applications, and AI identities, not just administrator accounts.
- Asset protection from day one. Modern PAM protects all assets immediately, before a single privileged account is discovered or onboarded, across user-to-machine, user-to-app, and machine-to-machine interactions.
- Comprehensive, enterprise-wide protection. Every user, account, and asset, whether IT, OT, or cloud, is protected from the start, closing the gaps legacy PAM leaves and reducing major risks.
- Resilient, distributed architecture. A distributed vault removes any single point of failure and scales horizontally as the organization grows, without major overhauls or added cost.
- Built for multiple self-managed sites. Deploying across multiple self-managed sites and hybrid cloud, is fast because each node inherits policy, user, and credential data from other nodes, unlike legacy PAM, which forces a choice between full cloud connectivity or separately managed on-premises deployments.
- Operational in DDIL environments. Modern PAM keeps enforcing Zero Trust access and privilege policy even when a remote site, data center, or edge location loses connectivity to the central network.
- Advanced session and credential controls. Layered MFA, SSO across a wide range of targets, privileged session management and recording, just-in-time access, and secure file transfer eliminate the need for static or shared credentials.
XPAM vs.Traditional PAM: Key Differences
XPAM vs. traditional PAM comes down to architecture: XPAM enforces protection immediately via a distributed, agentless overlay with no central vault, while traditional PAM requires lengthy discovery, endpoint agents, and a centralized vault before protection begins.
| Criteria | Xage | Traditional PAM |
|---|---|---|
| Easy Deployment for Multiple Sites | 🟢 Deploying Xage across multiple sites is fast and easy since each node automatically inherits policy, user, and credential data from other nodes—even in self-hosted deployments. | 🔴 Traditional PAM struggles with multiple, self-managed deployments, often resulting in manual setup for every site that won’t stay in sync across sites. |
| Single Sign-On | 🟢 Xage provides single sign-on access to and protection all the way to individual systems and assets with fully managed device/endpoint identity. Xage users only need to know their Xage access credentials and can securely access individual devices they are allowed to per policy. | 🟡 Traditional PAM’s SSO doesn’t extend to the kinds of legacy assets and applications common in operational environments. Users are left using manual logins for OT assets or using clunky integrations to connect, whether remotely or on site. |
| Multifactor Authentication | 🟢 Xage, with multiple site specific IdPs, provides layered multifactor authentication across the entire enterprise, from IT to OT to DMZ to the cloud. | 🔴 Traditional PAM enables MFA at a single layer, when the user first authenticates into their system, which leads to siloed site-specific deployments to meet site-specific IdP requirements leading to very high operational costs. |
| Machine-to-Machine (East-West) Lateral Movement Control | 🟢 Xage enables policy-based access control of machine-to-machine communication east-to-west within a network. This prevents malicious target discovery and lateral movement, and the spread of malware. | 🔴 Traditional PAM can authenticate M2M connections but can’t set policies to control machine-to-machine communication or prevent lateral movement within the network. |
| Full Support for On-Premises Deployment | 🟢 Xage supports a distributed on-premises deployment that is extremely secure and works even with limited or intermittent connectivity. | 🟡 Traditional PAM prioritizes cloud deployments, with on-premises options becoming an afterthought. Cloud-hosted PAM has big drawbacks for operational environments which may have limited or intermittent connectivity. |
| Rapid Deployment | 🟢 Xage can be deployed in a day and begins providing access and protection immediately. Since Xage requires no installation of agents, no firewall rule updates, and no network changes, the deployment is seamless and nondisruptive. | 🔴 Deploying traditional PAM can require the installation of new software at various points in the environments to be accessed, introducing friction and delays. Deploying traditional PAM may also require updates to firewall rules and allow lists to enable users to access the assets they need to do their jobs. |
| DDIL Environments | 🟢 Xage uses a distributed architecture with nodes that can function independently, preventing downtime even in disrupted, disconnected, intermittent and low-bandwidth (DDIL) environments. | 🔴 Even when self-hosted, traditional PAM centralizes their credential vault, meaning it struggles with DDIL environments when there’s more than a single site or location involved. |
How XPAM Solves Today’s PAM Challenges
As enterprises move to the cloud, legacy PAM solutions are increasingly obsolete. According to Gartner, by 2025 over half of IT spending will shift to public cloud services, highlighting the need for PAM solutions that can handle cloud-native challenges. In cloud environments, identity and authorization have become crucial aspects of access management.
Instead of managing static credentials, Xage XPAM is designed for dynamic environments. It embraces just-in-time (JIT) permissions, a model that grants users temporary time-bound access when they need it, for as long as they need it and no longer. By avoiding permanent “birthright” access, Xage XPAM reduces exposure to threats and prevents over-permissioned accounts from becoming security liabilities.
Xage XPAM’s JIT access approach not only strengthens security but also eases compliance. By making sensitive roles and permissions ephemeral, Xage XPAM reduces the administrative burden of compliance by requiring users to re-request or justify access every time. This helps companies identify and remove unneeded permissions while maintaining a robust audit trail.
Chapter markers:
0:00 What Is XPAM? Day-One Privileged Access Protection
0:54 Discovering Privileged Accounts with XPAM
2:09 Using Plugins to Automate Account Discovery
3:39 Rotating and Securing a Privileged Account
4:32 Privileged Session Access and Account Checkout
Key Takeaways
- Legacy PAM falls short because it depends on centralized vaults, lengthy discovery, and agent-based deployment that leave OT and non-privileged assets exposed.
- Modern PAM for OT and IT means Zero Trust enforcement from day one, across every asset and identity, human or machine.
- XPAM vs. traditional PAM is a difference in architecture: distributed and agentless versus centralized and agent-dependent.
- Just-in-time access replaces standing privileges, reducing both attack surface and compliance overhead.
- XPAM stays operational in DDIL and disconnected environments where traditional PAM fails.
- Lower total cost of ownership comes from reduced infrastructure, professional services, and management complexity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does legacy PAM fall short in OT environments?
Legacy PAM depends on agents and network redesign that most OT assets can’t support, and its centralized vault model breaks down when remote or air-gapped sites lose connectivity, leaving OT systems unprotected during outages.
What is modern PAM for OT and IT?
Modern PAM for OT and IT is Zero Trust PAM that protects every asset, human and machine, from day one using a distributed, agentless architecture, rather than waiting for account discovery to finish before enforcing access controls.
How is XPAM different from traditional PAM like CyberArk or BeyondTrust?
XPAM uses a distributed, agentless overlay with no central vault, enforcing least privilege and just-in-time access immediately, while traditional PAM requires centralized vaulting, endpoint agents, and a lengthy discovery phase.
Does XPAM require replacing existing PAM infrastructure?
No. XPAM deploys as an agentless overlay without network redesign or rip-and-replace, layering onto existing IT, OT, and cloud environments rather than requiring a full infrastructure swap.
Can XPAM operate without cloud connectivity?
Yes. XPAM’s distributed architecture enforces access and privilege policy locally, so protection continues even in DDIL (denied, disrupted, intermittent, or limited) connectivity environments.
Is just-in-time access required for Zero Trust PAM?
Just-in-time access is a core requirement of Zero Trust PAM. It replaces standing privileges with temporary, time-bound access, reducing attack surface and simplifying audit and compliance reporting.
“Legacy PAM deployments can resemble a slow crawl up a mountain as new applications and accounts accumulate over time. Xage turns that around by starting at the mountaintop. Xage is designed to cover an enterprise’s critical mass of assets on day one and offers simplified manageability for optimal enterprise value over time.”
Todd Thiemann, Senior Analyst
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)
SOLUTION SHOWCASE
