Thycotic and Centrify Recognized Again as Leaders in New 2021 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for PAM

As we announced our merger in March and began our integration, Thycotic and Centrify were in the process of being evaluated separately by KuppingerCole for its 2021 Leadership Compass for Privileged Access Management (PAM). Not surprisingly, both Thycotic and Centrify were named Overall Leaders again, as well as earning leadership positions in the major categories of Product Leadership, Innovation Leadership, and Market Leadership. Both companies are also recognized as leaders in all correlated view matrices including Market Champions, Technology Leaders, and “Big Ones” which encompasses an Innovation/Market Matrix.

You can download a complimentary copy of the report here.

The need for PAM solutions keeps growing as hackers increasingly target privileged accounts

The report noted, “most successful cyber-attacks involve the misuse of privileged accounts. And misuse is enabled by poor management of privileged access using old or inadequate PAM software, policies, or processes…The message is clear: hackers are actively targeting privileged accounts as the best way to get inside an organization.”

At the same time, the number and nature of PAM vendor offerings has increased to match the spending in this marketplace. The report notes there are PAM vendors now competing for annual revenues that will total $2.2 billion in 2021 and will more than double to $5.4 billion by 2025.

Flexible, usable PAM critical in managing dynamic IT environments

Analyst Paul Fisher, author of the Leadership Compass report, highlighted the evolution of PAM to a more dynamic operating model with SaaS and flexible purchasing options. He emphasized that “Ease of Use is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but increasingly seen as essential to cope with the growing demands on PAM. We are seeing more use of consumer-like Wizard tools to ease set up and deployment.”

The report noted several Thycotic strengths in the PAM market including its breadth of solutions with enhanced capabilities, strong endpoint management capabilities, and a user interface that leverages current UX trends for ease of use. Centrify’s listed strengths include deep Active Directory (AD) integration for complex configurations, strong multi-factor authentication (MFA) and identity federation support, and a mature PAM-as-a-Service offering.

One interesting graphic in the report focuses on the breadth of specific PAM solution capabilities in the form of a “spider graph” evaluating every vendor across eight key categories. The spider graph shown helps to illustrate how robust Thycotic solutions manage these categories ranging from endpoint privilege management to just-in-time access, analytics, and reporting.