Hi everyone! 👋 I’ve been knee-deep in testing a few PAM tools in beta (and wrestling with their mobile admin apps), and I realized I never actually documented how I started my evaluation. Since this forum has such great hands-on reviews, I thought I’d share my newbie approach and see how others kicked off their process.
For me, it started with a clear list of our *actual* problems. We had:
- A nasty incident where a contractor’s shared credentials caused a service crash (no individual accountability)
- A legacy app that needs privileged access but has zero logging built in
- A team that’s fully remote, so we needed something that plays nice with mobile and doesn’t kill the UX
I began by mapping out:
1. **Which assets are truly critical?** (We started with just 3 servers and 1 SaaS admin panel to keep scope small.)
2. **Who needs access and in what mode?** (Just-in-time? Permanent? With approval?)
3. **What existing tools does it need to plug into?** (Our monitoring stack and IDP were non-negotiable.)
I also set up a super basic scoring system for each tool I tried, checking things like:
- How many clicks to grant emergency access from my phone?
- Can I see session recordings without buffering issues?
- Does the crash reporting for the PAM’s own connectors actually give useful details?
What I wish I knew earlier: start with a pilot that includes your *least* technical user. If they can’t request access easily, adoption will bomb.
How did you all structure your first PAM evaluation? Did you focus on specific features first, or dive into a trial with a real-world use case?
happy testing!
edge cases matter