Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a set of policies, processes, and tools designed to protect privileged access credentials from theft. Organizations are turning to PAM to prevent breaches that could do the most damage in a cybercrime environment constantly targeting user credentials. An administrator's Privileged Account credentials could let hackers roam across a network undetected for months. PAM protects these elevated credentials and enforces best security practices to minimize the attack surface and mitigate successful breaches. PAM limits the scope and duration of a user's access privileges to the absolute minimum needed to get a specific job done, using principles of role-based least privilege access. This approach reduces the available attack surface and makes lateral movement more difficult in the event a Privileged Account is compromised.