You have a secrets manager. Do you also need a PAM tool? Or the other way around?
This question trips up more security teams than almost any other. The tools overlap, the vendors deliberately blur the lines in their marketing, and the compliance frameworks mention both in the same breath. But the two categories solve different problems, and the right answer is usually "you need both, in a specific configuration."
Here is a practical breakdown.
What secrets management actually does
Secrets management is the discipline of storing, rotating, and distributing credentials, API keys, certificates, and other sensitive values — almost always for machine-to-machine use.
A typical secrets management workflow looks like this:
- A CI/CD pipeline needs to deploy to AWS. It authenticates to HashiCorp Vault (or AWS Secrets Manager, or Doppler), pulls a short-lived AWS credential, runs the deploy, and the credential expires.
- A microservice needs to connect to a database. It authenticates to the secrets manager, fetches a rotating database password, makes the connection, and the password is rotated every 24 hours.
- A Kubernetes pod reads a TLS cert from an External Secrets Operator, which is syncing from Vault.
Notice what's missing: humans. Secrets management is fundamentally about giving non-human workloads short-lived, rotating credentials without hardcoding them in config files or checking them into Git.
The big secrets management tools — HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Infisical, Doppler, GCP Secret Manager — all excel at this core job.
What PAM actually does
PAM (Privileged Access Management) is about controlling human access to privileged systems. It answers a different set of questions:
- Who logged into the production database last Tuesday, and what queries did they run?
- Can Sarah from the backend team get temporary SSH access to the payments server, approved by her manager, for the next 30 minutes?
- When an engineer uses the break-glass root account, is the session recorded and replayable?
- If someone tries to SSH into a production box at 3am from a country we don't operate in, does the attempt get blocked?
PAM tools (CyberArk, BeyondTrust, Delinea, Teleport, StrongDM) provide:
- A credential vault that humans don't directly see
- Session brokering: the PAM tool connects for you, injecting credentials without exposing them
- Session recording: video or command-level capture of what the privileged user did
- Just-in-time access: temporary privileges that expire
- Audit trails good enough for SOC 2, PCI, or FedRAMP auditors
The overlap nobody tells you about
Nearly every PAM tool includes a secrets vault inside it. Nearly every modern secrets manager has some form of human access workflow (1Password has team vaults, HashiCorp Vault + Boundary can broker sessions, etc.).
This is why vendors blur the lines. CyberArk calls itself a "privileged access" company but ships Conjur (a pure secrets manager) in the same suite. HashiCorp Vault started as a secrets manager and added Boundary as a session broker.
In practice, the distinction breaks down like this:
| If your primary users are... | You primarily need... | |---|---| | CI/CD pipelines, microservices, K8s workloads | Secrets management | | Database admins, SREs, platform engineers doing privileged work | PAM | | Both (most real companies) | Both, composed together |
Do you need PAM at all?
Ask yourself:
1. Do humans ever SSH into production servers? 2. Do engineers ever run ad-hoc queries against the production database? 3. Does anyone have local admin on servers, not just via config management? 4. Is there a root / domain admin / break-glass account that multiple people know the password to? 5. Are you in a regulated industry (finance, healthcare, government)?
If any answer is yes, you probably need PAM. If all answers are no — if everything is pipeline-driven, Terraform-managed, and no human ever touches a privileged console — a mature secrets manager alone may be sufficient.
The honest truth: most companies answer "yes" to at least two of those, even ones that claim to be fully automated.
The practical stack in 2026
Here is a combined architecture that shows up in real companies:
Machine identity (secrets management): - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager as the backend vault - External Secrets Operator syncing to Kubernetes - Short-lived DB credentials rotated by Vault's database secrets engine - SPIFFE/SPIRE issuing workload identities where mutual TLS matters
Human access (PAM): - Teleport or StrongDM as the identity-aware proxy in front of servers, databases, and Kubernetes - PAM broker fetches credentials from the secrets vault at session time - Sessions recorded and exported to SIEM - SSO (Okta, Entra ID) as the identity provider for both
Notice how the two layers compose. The PAM tool uses the secrets manager as its credential vault. Humans authenticate to PAM with their SSO identity. Pipelines authenticate to the secrets manager directly. Both feed audit logs to the same SIEM.
This is what "defense in depth" looks like in 2026: short-lived credentials for machines, brokered sessions for humans, one identity layer underneath it all.
Common mistakes
Trying to do PAM with a password manager. 1Password and Bitwarden are great password managers. They are not PAM. They don't record sessions, don't broker infrastructure access, and don't give you the audit trail a compliance auditor needs.
Trying to do secrets management with PAM. CyberArk can technically store API keys, but using enterprise PAM for pipeline secrets is like using a bank vault to store your lunch money. Expensive, slow, and not fit for purpose.
Deploying both but not integrating them. If your PAM tool and your secrets manager have two separate credential vaults that humans have to manage separately, you've doubled your credential sprawl, not reduced it. Integration is the whole point.
Forgetting about machine identity. If your PAM deployment is perfect but your CI/CD pipeline has a static AWS access key hardcoded in a GitHub secret from 2022, you have not solved the problem. The credential sprawl will get you even if human access is locked down.
What to do next
If you don't have either: start with a secrets manager. Machine credentials are usually more numerous, more automatable, and easier to win quickly. Vault, Infisical, or your cloud provider's native service are all good starting points.
If you have secrets management but not PAM: audit who has privileged access to production systems. If the answer is "more than five people" or "anyone with the shared SSH key," you need PAM. Teleport (OSS or commercial) is usually the fastest way in.
If you have PAM but no secrets management: your CI/CD pipelines are almost certainly leaking credentials somewhere. Start with Vault or the cloud-native service that matches your primary cloud.
If you have both but they're not integrated: pick the PAM tool as the session layer and wire it into the secrets manager's API. This is the biggest multiplier you can get without buying new software.