Delinea being named an Overall Leader in the 2026 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass is a useful prompt to examine what leadership in the privileged access management market should mean. Recognition matters, but the more important question for buyers is whether a platform can reduce privilege exposure across the hybrid environments where administrators, contractors, workloads and applications operate.
PAM buyers face a familiar trap: comparing feature checklists while underestimating deployment and operating complexity. A product may offer credential vaulting, session recording and analytics, yet still leave teams with fragmented policies, incomplete discovery or large volumes of manual exceptions. The result is a PAM programme that exists on paper while privileged access continues to be granted through unmanaged paths.
A mature platform should make discovery continuous. It should identify privileged accounts, local administrator rights, shared credentials, secrets in automation and access delegated through cloud services. That inventory must be connected to ownership and business context so that the security team can distinguish a necessary emergency account from a dormant entitlement that should be removed.
Operational controls are the next differentiator. Just-in-time access, automatic credential rotation, approval workflows and session management reduce the window in which an attacker or insider can misuse privilege. Strong integrations are also essential: PAM needs to work with identity providers, endpoint platforms, ticketing systems, cloud services and security monitoring so that access decisions are based on current context and incidents can trigger rapid revocation.
Session management deserves particular attention during evaluation. Buyers should test whether the platform can broker connections without revealing credentials, record meaningful activity, enforce command or application restrictions and support real-time intervention. These capabilities are especially important for third-party access, where the organisation may have limited control over the user’s device and working practices.
Leadership in PAM should therefore be measured by outcomes: less standing privilege, faster onboarding and offboarding, stronger oversight of remote sessions, fewer unmanaged secrets and clearer evidence for audits and investigations. Analyst recognition can narrow the shortlist, but a controlled pilot should determine whether the platform can deliver those outcomes in the buyer’s actual environment.
Source: Pluang