Nearly half (47 percent) of security professionals are already using, planning or exploring deployment of PAM solutions in the cloud, according to the Thycotic 2019 RSA Conference Survey. 

According to the survey, PAM adoption is becoming increasingly cloud-based and the results suggest this cloud migration will continue:

• 21 percent of companies have adopted a PAM Solution hosted in the cloud as-a-service or plan to implement such technology.
• 26 percent are looking to transition to a cloud-based PAM Solution. Only 36 percent say they plan to keep their PAM solution on-premise.
• Organizations see a future with cloud-based security solutions and expect to increase their use of cloud security solutions to 65 percent over the next 1-2 years.

Other results from the survey reveal that IT and security teams are still struggling with getting management and daily users to understand the absolute necessity of PAM solutions:

• 28 percent said the biggest challenge was convincing team members to use the PAM solution.
• 24 percent said educating organizations’ leaders.
• 19 percent said finding the budget for PAM technology.

As the threat of cyber-attacks on privileged accounts continues to rise, naturally the deployment of PAM solutions must continue to increase. As a result, PAM awareness is rapidly growing, but still 85 percent of organizations fail to meet basic PAM security standards. Fortunately, 66 percent of respondents are increasing their knowledge of PAM technologies.