Centrify a LEADER in the 2020 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for PAM

Centrify is honored and pleased to once again be named a LEADER in the recently-published 2020 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Privileged Access Management! We were also recognized as a leader in the 2017 and 2019 editions of the PAM Leadership Compass.

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is one of the most important areas of risk management and security in any organization, writes the report’s author, Paul Fisher, and to reduce privileged access abuse and uphold compliance, “a strong PAM solution is essential.”

KuppingerCole evaluated 24 vendors in the 2020 PAM Leadership Compass, assessing the market segment and major vendors offering PAM solutions, rating them for Product Leadership, Innovation Leadership, and Market Leadership.

Centrify was not only named an Overall Leader in the report, but also a Leader in all three categories (Product, Innovation, Market) as well as all correlated categories including Market Champions, Technology Leaders, and Big Ones (its Innovation/Market Matrix). We were honored with the same seven recognitions in the 2019 report as well.

As the report calls out, while specialized solutions have their place, digital transformation has created a modern IT estate that can no longer be secured by legacy PAM solutions. “With the attack surface expanding and the number of attacks increasing every year, an integrated and more comprehensive PAM solution is required – one that can automatically detect unusual behavior and initiate automated mitigations.”

The report highlights Centrify’s strength in Controlled Privilege Elevation and Delegation Management (CPEDM) and its integrations with leading IT Service Management (ITSM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) vendors. “CPEDM is available with Just in Time privileged access via built-in workflows or available through integration with 3rd parties such as ServiceNow and SailPoint Technologies.”

The report also articulates strengths such as Centrify’s deep AD integration, our mature PAM-as-a-Service offering, and DevOps support with “good suitability for hybrid and containerized IT environments.”

To read the full report, visit https://www.kuppingercole.com/report/lc80088 (subscription required).

CENTRIFY IDENTITY-CENTRIC PAM

Centrify believes our Identity-Centric approach to PAM based on Zero Trust principles is what makes us one of the top Leaders in this report. As organizations continue their digital transformation journeys, they struggle to manage identities that are fragmented across hybrid- and multi-cloud environments, resulting in data breaches, audit findings, and unnecessary overhead costs.

Centrify Identity-Centric PAM addresses this challenge with a cloud-native solution that simplifies privilege management by centralizing identities, and establishes per-machine trust. Administrative management and access is seamless, security and compliance postures are strengthened, and machines are empowered to defend themselves against cyber-threats.

ANALYZING A GROWING PAM MARKET

One of the things we found interesting in this year’s report is how much the PAM market has expanded, and how much more tightly the groupings have become. There are 24 vendors in this year’s evaluation, 40% more than last year, and the field of Leaders has expanded from 6 in 2019 to 9 this year with not a single vendor in the Follower category.

KuppingerCole’s report has the most vendors evaluated of any of the analyst reports for PAM. While it can be interesting to know something about a lot of vendors, our opinion is that it can also lead to watered down analysis due to shear volume. While KuppingerCole has the broadest coverage, not all industry analyst reports are created equal.

After being on the vendor side of the process for over 20 years and participating in many similar evaluations, I thought I would share with you how I utilize the various reports for technology insights. There is some variability year-to-year and analyst-to-analyst, but each firm’s process dictates their outcome.

• The Forrester Wave is typically going to give the best evaluation of a certain product’s functionality. Uniquely, at least for the PIM Wave, each vendor is required to provide a live test environment for Forrester to validate vendor claims.
• Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is for sure the most popular report, and tends to reward more heavily on a vendor’s market performance. The related Gartner Critical Capabilities report ranks vendors based on specific use cases, which can be very valuable and many Gartner analysts believe it should be your primary source.
• KuppingerCole’s Leadership Compass covers the greatest number of vendors, which can be helpful. As a much smaller firm, the depth of analysis suffers. For example, there is no formal customer reference process or demos to validate vendor’s claims.
• The IDC Marketscape used to be a decent report, but they have not published anything for PAM in quite a few years. I’m hoping that report will once again emerge.

I hope this “insider’s perspective” is helpful when you are evaluating technology decisions…use at your own risk.

This post was first first published on Blog | Centrify website by AndySmith. You can view it by clicking here