Gartner defines the insider risk management (IRM) market as solutions that use advanced analytics, monitoring, and behavior-based risk models to detect, analyze and mitigate risks posed by trusted insiders within an organization. These solutions monitor the activities of employees, service partners and key suppliers to ensure their behavior aligns with corporate policies and risk tolerance levels. IRM platforms can be delivered as cloud-based services or on-premises solutions, or in hybrid forms. When effectively implemented alongside proper governance, they provide comprehensive visibility, real-time detection, and proactive intervention to safeguard against data theft, fraud and other malicious or unintentional insider threat activities.
Gartner defines privileged access management (PAM) as tools that provide an elevated level of technical access through the management and protection of accounts, credentials and commands, which are used to administer or configure systems and applications. PAM tools — available as software, SaaS or hardware appliances — manage privileged access for both people (system administrators and others) and machines (systems or applications). Gartner defines five distinct tool categories for PAM tools: privileged account and session management (PASM), privilege elevation and delegation management (PEDM), secrets management, cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) and remote PAM (RPAM). Privileged access is access beyond the normal level granted to both human and machine accounts. It allows users to override existing access controls, change security configurations, or make changes affecting multiple users or systems. As privileged access can create, modify and delete IT infrastructure, along with company data contained in that infrastructure, it presents catastrophic risk. Managing privileged access is thus a critical security function for every organization and requires a specific set of procedures and tools. PAM tools focus on either privileged accounts or privileged commands.