Our latest evaluative research on privileged identity management (PIM) solution providers, The Forrester Wave™: Privileged Identity Management Solutions, Q3 2025, is now live!

Forrester’s evaluation was completed prior to Palo Alto Networks’ announced intention to acquire CyberArk, a seismic shock to the PIM market. From an industry perspective, last week’s news further validates that identity security, including PIM, is core to cybersecurity and that PIM capabilities will play an instrumental role in the future of agentic AI security. It also serves as a reminder of how far PIM solutions have advanced in recent years.

Once rooted primarily in compliance and IT administrator access control, PIM solutions are evolving into intelligent, AI-driven platforms to address the complexities stemming from diverse computing environments, an expanding set of use cases, and a spectrum of identity types spanning human, machine, and AI agents. PIM solutions are a foundational component for addressing identity security challenges and preventing identity-based attacks.

At their core, the PIM solutions we evaluated operationalize Zero Trust principles by enabling organizations to enforce least privilege access, proactively manage risk across their identity landscape, and accelerate identity threat detection. They deliver deep visibility into privileged identities, apply risk-based analytics, and integrate across the enterprise ecosystem.

Organizations planning a PIM deployment or enhancing their existing PIM deployment should consider these three important factors:

  • The journey to just-in-time privilege. Today’s PIM solutions emphasize end-to-end privileged identity lifecycle management to help reduce standing access, minimize attack surface, and proactively contain privilege identity sprawl. PIM vendors employ the powerful combination of least privilege access and just-in-time privilege to accomplish these goals. This means evaluating how the ephemeral approaches to privilege provided by PIM solutions, especially for cloud and SaaS applications, can be applied to your environment.
  • Compliance remaining as a PIM cornerstone. For many customers, audit compliance and incident investigations are still their most common PIM use cases. Do not overlook the basics of session management and monitoring and endpoint privilege management. Advanced analytics and generative AI features have created differentiation in these areas, too.
  • PIM’s role in improving end-user productivity and operational efficiencies. Another common theme from the customer interviews conducted during the evaluation was the importance of keeping the end-user perspective top of mind, particularly as your PIM user base expands and diversifies. To this end, orchestration and integration are now paramount. PIM vendors have responded by significantly stepping up workflow integrations with enterprise and developer tools, including third-party credential vaults. Explore how privileged task automation capabilities can drive productivity gains while reinforcing security and compliance.

Forrester clients can read the full evaluation, The Forrester Wave™: Privileged Identity Management Solutions, Q3 2025, now! Use this report for more insights on the market and the 10 providers that matter most.

Have questions about the evaluation’s findings or the changes happening in the PIM market? Book an inquiry or guidance session with me.