Modern Privileged Access Management

Overview

Privileged accounts remain the shortest path from an initial foothold to material impact. Human, service and machine accounts accumulate over time, credentials become shared or hard-coded, and standing administrative access can persist long after the original need has gone. The result is a larger attack surface and a harder audit story.

A modern privileged security program discovers and classifies privileged accounts, protects and rotates credentials, reduces standing access and records high-risk activity. Avocado connects privileged access management with secrets management and machine identity management, so the same program addresses privileged human accounts, service and application credentials, and pipeline secrets together.

Who is this for?

You'll recognise the situation

Privileged accounts have accumulated across humans, services and machines, and nobody can fully account for who or what actually holds standing access.

Credentials are shared or hard-coded into scripts, pipelines and configuration files instead of vaulted and rotated.

Your certificate estate is managed manually, and renewal is becoming harder to sustain as validity periods shorten.

You want one program addressing privileged human accounts, service credentials and machine identities together, not three disconnected efforts.

What's included

One program across every identity

Privileged Access Management

Discover, control and reduce privileged human and non-human access.

Secrets Management

Remove hard-coded application secrets and replace them with centralised, auditable access.

Machine Identity Management

Inventory and automate machine identities and certificates across the estate.

In detail

How each capability works

Privileged Access Management

Privileged access management is most effective when it reduces standing privilege rather than simply moving credentials into a vault. We design control around how administrators actually work, while bringing service and machine accounts into the same security conversation.

Our approach

Privileged account discovery and classification across human, service, machine and application accounts.
Resilient vault architecture, hardening, high availability and disaster recovery design.
Credential vaulting and rotation, including the elimination of shared and hard-coded credentials.
Just-in-time and time-bound privilege elevation to replace standing administrative access.
Privileged session management and recording for high-risk access, and break-glass access design that is usable, controlled and evidenced.

Secrets Management

Application secrets sprawl quickly across source control, pipeline variables, configuration files and container images. We help move those secrets into centralised vaulting and runtime access patterns so applications do not depend on hard-coded credentials.

Our approach

Secrets discovery and triage across source repositories, pipelines, configuration stores and container images.
Centralised secrets platform architecture, namespace and access model, integrated with existing vaults rather than forced consolidation.
Application remediation patterns for containers, serverless functions, CI/CD pipelines, RPA and traditional application servers.
Developer self-service patterns, reference implementations, pipeline templates and guardrails.

Machine Identity Management

Machines now vastly outnumber people in enterprises, and each one is reliant on an identity. Certificate validity is also shortening, making manual renewal increasingly difficult to sustain. We build the inventory, lifecycle controls and automation needed to manage machine identities at scale.

Our approach

Certificate discovery across public and private networks, machines, cloud keystores, TLS endpoints and Kubernetes clusters.
Consolidated inventory with named owners.
Policy-driven certificate issuance, renewal, deployment and post-deployment validation.
Integration with load balancers, web tiers, cloud keystores and CI/CD pipelines.
Readiness for certificate-validity changes, CA distrust events, algorithm deprecation and post-quantum migration.

How do we deliver it?

From standing access to time-bound, evidenced privilege

Assess and strategise

Discover and classify privileged accounts, secrets and machine identities across your estate — human, service and machine.

Architect

Design resilient vault architecture and certificate management patterns, including high availability and disaster recovery.

Build

Build the platform: vaulting, rotation, just-in-time elevation, and certificate lifecycle automation.

Onboard

Bring accounts, secrets and certificates onto the platform without disrupting how administrators and pipelines actually work.

Reduce privilege

Move from standing access to time-bound, evidenced privilege, with the majority of effort going into this step, not the integration work.

What tools and technology do we use?

Built around reducing standing privilege

Our practitioners hold accredited capability across several industry recognised platforms and broader privileged access architectures, applied to resilient vault solutions, credential rotation, and certificate lifecycle management across public and private networks, cloud keystores, TLS endpoints and Kubernetes clusters. The approach is designed around reducing standing privilege regardless of platform, not a fixed vendor preference.

What outcomes can you expect?

What you walk away with

Shrink the standing privilege an attacker can steal, across both human and non-human accounts.

Reduce exposed and hard-coded application credentials.

One authoritative machine-identity inventory instead of an unmanaged sprawl of certificates.

Compliance-ready evidence for auditors and investigators, produced as a by-product of how the platform runs.

Proof · Case study

Enterprise Secrets Management

Read the case study

How is this engagement structured?

Not sure whether your biggest gap is standing privilege, secrets sprawl or machine identity? Talk to us about a cyber security discovery. Contact us for a tailored quote.

FAQ

Common questions

What is privileged access management (PAM)?

PAM is the discipline of discovering, controlling and reducing privileged access across human, service, and machine accounts through vaulting, credential rotation, just-in-time elevation, and session recording.

How is this different from Identity Threat Detection and Monitoring?

This page covers the build and operation of privileged access, secrets, and machine identity controls. Identity Threat Detection and Monitoring focuses on discovering and prioritising identity-related exposure across your estate — the two are complementary.

Do you work with CyberArk specifically?

Yes — our practitioners hold accredited capability across CyberArk and broader security disciplines, though the approach is designed around reducing standing privilege regardless of platform.

What is machine identity management and why does it matter?

Machine identity management governs certificates and credentials for the non-human identities — services, containers, devices — that now outnumber human accounts in most estates, and increasingly need automated lifecycle management as certificate validity periods shorten.

Can this integrate with our existing secrets vault?

Yes — secrets management is designed to integrate with existing vaults where they exist, rather than forcing consolidation onto a new platform.

Modern Privileged Access Management

You'll recognise the situation

One program across every identity

Privileged Access Management

Secrets Management

Machine Identity Management

How each capability works

Privileged Access Management

Secrets Management

Machine Identity Management

From standing access to time-bound, evidenced privilege

Assess and strategise

Architect

Build

Onboard

Reduce privilege

Built around reducing standing privilege

What you walk away with

Common questions

Where teams go next