PAM and ITDR: Why Your Organization Needs Both

Identity security is undergoing a fundamental transformation. As identity-based attacks increase, traditional PAM tools are no longer enough to safeguard organizations. In this article, we examine why PAM alone isn’t keeping pace with modern identity-based attacks. You’ll see what ITDR is, how it closes security gaps, and how combining PAM with ITDR can result in a more resilient cybersecurity strategy.

Key takeaways:

• Identity compromise is now the primary attack vector, according to IBM: 30% of breaches begin with stolen credentials rather than brute force.
• PAM secures privileged credentials but lacks insight into a user’s intent after logging in.
• ITDR offers context on what happens after access is granted, helping to detect misuse and insider threats.
• The combination of PAM with ITDR addresses the full attack lifecycle by controlling access and giving insight into user behavior. Prioritizing PAM platforms with built-in ITDR can help you improve security and reduce risks, without adding complexity.

The shift in identity security: From PAM alone to PAM with ITDR

IBM’s X-Force 2025 Threat Intelligence Index reports that identity-driven intrusions now account for 30% of all attacks, with malicious actors increasingly relying on compromised login credentials rather than brute-force attacks. In other words, attackers aren’t breaking in anymore; they’re logging in.

This trend exposes a gap in the traditional PAM approach to cybersecurity. PAM helps you control access, but you also need the ability to detect abnormal behavior and intervene quickly if an identity, such as a personal or service account, becomes compromised.

Organizations have spent considerable effort improving IAM capabilities, but much of it has been focused on technology to improve user authentication, which actually increases the attack surface… ITDR tools can help protect identity systems, detect when they are compromised and enable efficient remediation.

Gartner

Combining PAM with ITDR is no longer optional. In fact, it’s the foundation of modern resilient identity security. 

Before exploring how PAM and ITDR work together, it’s essential to clarify what PAM does and doesn’t fully address.

What is PAM good at / bad at?

PAM remains essential for protecting your organization’s most sensitive assets. It gives your security team control over privileged accounts through capabilities such as password vaulting, account discovery, just-in-time access, and privileged session monitoring. 

These controls form the foundation of IT infrastructure security. However, PAM alone cannot address the full spectrum of modern identity threats, especially attacks that rely on compromised credentials and legitimate access misuse.

By design, PAM focuses on controlling who gets access and when. It forms a strong foundation for access governance and can prevent many cybersecurity attacks. For instance, in 2024, a threat actor used stolen credentials to access hundreds of Snowflake customer accounts, exfiltrate sensitive data, and extort organizations, including AT&T, Ticketmaster, and Santander, for millions of dollars. A well-implemented PAM solution with multi-factor authentication (MFA) for user authorization could have disrupted the attack at an early stage.

However, PAM’s visibility largely ends once access is legitimately granted. If an attacker is already inside your organization’s IT perimeter, PAM alone cannot determine intent, detect lateral movement, or identify suspicious behavior during an active session. This limitation leaves organizations vulnerable to identity-based attacks that operate undetected under the guise of legitimate access. And that’s where ITDR can help.

How does ITDR close the security gap?

Identity threat detection and response (ITDR) is a set of practices and tools designed to proactively detect, investigate, and respond to identity-related threats and vulnerabilities across an organization’s IT environment. The meaning of ITDR, as defined by KuppingerCole, is “identity-defense-in-depth,” highlighting its importance in securing identities that attackers target to gain unauthorized access to sensitive systems and data.

ITDR is a crucial component of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, as identities have become the primary targets of attackers looking to gain unauthorized access to sensitive systems and information. By focusing on the security of identities, ITDR helps organizations protect against a range of threats, including credential theft, account takeovers, and insider threats.

2024 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Identity Threat Detection and Response

Unlike PAM, which focuses on granting and controlling access, ITDR provides continuous visibility into identity behavior after legitimate access is granted. ITDR tools usually offer these functionalities:

• Account visibility: Identity threat detection and response tools help you identify and uncover identities across your entire environment, including human users, service accounts, credentials, roles, and entitlements.
• Activity monitoring: By continuously observing identity-related activity across the IT environment, ITDR helps increase visibility and provides your security team with real-time insights into what’s happening within. 
• Threat detection: ITDR solutions for enterprise security analyze activity to detect signs of compromise or suspicious user behavior, such as unauthorized privilege escalation, risky password changes, and exploitation of identity services and protocols.
• Incident response: ITDR tools support automated or orchestrated actions, such as enforcing additional authentication, blocking processes or identities, and logging out of sessions.
• Forensic investigation: ITDR helps tie security events to context. ITDR solutions integrate easily with SIEM, SOAR, and XDR tools to help IT security personnel review alerts, reconstruct attack paths, and assess the impacts of incidents.

By correlating identity behavior across systems, ITDR uncovers threats that can blend in as legitimate activity, such as lateral movement or insider misuse. The ability to grasp context with the help of ITDR helps your security team recognize the intent behind certain actions.

In late December 2024, Coinbase faced an attack that did not begin with a technical exploit, but with people abusing trust. Support agents with legitimate access were bribed to steal customer data. Because these actions were performed using valid credentials within authorized systems, traditional PAM could not detect them. 

With ITDR, security teams could have detected this malicious activity before any damage was done. Continuous monitoring and behavioral analysis would have revealed access patterns that were divergent from normal support operations and could have alerted security teams to access misuse. That’s why it’s critical to use PAM combined with ITDR to prevent security breaches.

Why you should use PAM with ITDR

PAM and ITDR address different stages of identity-based security risks and are designed to solve different problems. But they are not interchangeable; they are complementary. Using PAM with ITDR for comprehensive protection strengthens your cybersecurity defenses in the following ways:

Cover the full identity attack lifecycle

PAM prevents unauthorized access by enforcing strong controls around credentials, privileges, and session initiation. It reduces risk at the point of entry by ensuring that only approved identities can access sensitive systems under defined conditions.

ITDR complements these preventative controls by detecting misuse after access is granted. Together, PAM and ITDR combine prevention and detection, ensuring that access is not only controlled but also continuously protected from misuse.

Minimize blind spots

While PAM focuses on privileged users, many identity-based threats originate from standard user accounts or service identities that fall outside its primary scope.

ITDR expands protection by monitoring post-login activity across all users and identities. This enables you to detect suspicious behavior wherever it occurs, whether it involves a privileged account, a regular user, or a machine identity.

Respond to and investigate incidents faster

ITDR complements PAM by providing continuous intelligence on identity behavior, enabling you to detect threats early and respond in real time.

By combining automated response actions with detailed activity context, ITDR expedites investigations and enhances security. Together, PAM and ITDR enable organizations to efficiently contain incidents while maintaining visibility into root causes and impact.

Make context-aware security decisions

By collecting and correlating identity behavior, access patterns, and threat signals, ITDR helps security teams understand not just the fact that something happened, but how it happened.

This intelligence enables technical teams to refine and strengthen weak security policies and processes over time. Insights gained from identity-driven incidents can be used to refine access rules, tighten authentication requirements, and improve credential hygiene, making security controls more adaptive and effective.

Streamline compliance

Many regulations require both access governance and ongoing monitoring. PAM enforces strict access controls for sensitive systems, while ITDR continuously monitors user activity after access is granted. By combining these capabilities, you can demonstrate consistent compliance with regulatory requirements and maintain detailed audit trails. This reduces manual effort during audits and strengthens confidence in your organization’s compliance posture.

How Syteca combines PAM with ITDR

Syteca is a modern PAM platform that offers access control with built-in ITDR. It provides your security team with the control, clarity, and evidence needed to understand what happens after access is granted and address identity-driven risks that traditional PAM solutions cannot spot.

PAM for preventive control

Syteca PAM focuses on establishing strict control over privileged access at the point of entry, reducing exposure before threats can occur.

• Privileged account discovery identifies all unmanaged privileged human and service accounts across your IT environment, helping eliminate unmanaged or unknown access paths.
• Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an extra layer of verification beyond credentials for privileged access.
• Manual access request approval adds oversight and accountability to the elevation of privileges.
• Just-in-time access provisioning removes standing privileges and reduces the attack surface.
• Workforce password manager protects credentials with centralized encrypted storage, automated rotation, and secure sharing.

ITDR for visibility and intelligence

Syteca’s ITDR capabilities provide you with visibility into what users do after authentication and enable you to detect threats early.

• Real-time activity monitoring enables security teams to track user behavior across systems and applications, giving you immediate visibility into post-login activity.
• Session recordings capture users’ on-screen activity, along with contextual details such as applications used, websites visited, and commands entered.
• Alerts on suspicious activity notify teams when monitoring data shows signs of malicious activity, enabling faster threat detection.
• Automated incident response helps contain threats and reduce response time when identity-based incidents occur.
• Over 30 types of activity reports provide structured insight into behavioral trends, support investigations, and streamline audits.

Syteca supports a broad range of operating systems and enables you to consistently control and manage threats across on-premises, SaaS, and hybrid infrastructures. Syteca helps you meet the GDPR, NIS2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA requirements and protects users’ privacy with pseudonymization and real-time sensitive data masking.

Converged PAM and ITDR: stronger security with less overhead

The question is not whether PAM or ITDR is better for your organization’s cybersecurity, but how you can use them together effectively. Look for platforms that combine PAM and ITDR by design, rather than relying on added tools and integrations. Native convergence delivers real-time detection, faster response times, and reduced identity risk, all without the cost and complexity of managing multiple solutions.

Syteca combines PAM with native ITDR, helping you move beyond fragmented security controls toward a more resilient security model.