PAM & Zero Trust Vendor Comparison

Independent notes on the platforms we specify most often for EU identity programmes: Delinea (formerly Thycotic and Centrify), CyberArk, BeyondTrust, Cisco Duo, Palo Alto Prisma Access, Elisity, CrowdStrike, and Stellar Cyber.

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Delinea

PAM Leader

Seamless Privileged Access Management enabling Just-in-Time access elevation without slowing down developers.

Deployment pattern

Securing Tier-0 AD for a tier-1 EU bank

Illustrative pattern: Delinea Secret Server (the Thycotic lineage) to remove hardcoded credentials at scale, shift privileged access to request-based elevation, and produce audit evidence that maps to DORA and NIS2 identity controls.

Cisco

Zero Trust Edge

Driving the perimeter to the endpoint with Cisco Duo. Contextual authentication mapped to user behavior and device health.

Deployment pattern

Frictionless MFA for a distributed remote workforce

A global logistics firm struggled with MFA fatigue. We deployed Cisco Duo's risk-based authentication engine, reducing intrusive prompts by 72% for standard operations, while instantly stepping up friction when geolocation anomalies were detected. Identity became transparent but secure.

Palo Alto

SASE Innovator

Prisma Access secures the traffic. By tying network access exclusively to authenticated identity posture, Palo Alto enforces Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).

Deployment pattern

Retiring legacy VPNs for identity-driven SASE

Traditional VPNs allowed lateral movement to clinical data networks. We replaced this with Palo Alto Prisma Access. Resource access is now dynamically calculated per session based on user identity, drastically shrinking the blast radius and preventing a lateral ransomware vector.

Elisity

Identity Microsegmentation

Agentless Zero Trust network access powered by IdentityGraph™. Anchor security policies directly to verified users and devices, not static IP addresses or VLANs.

Deployment pattern

Decommissioning VLANs for identity-based context

A global healthcare provider could no longer secure their IoT medical devices using legacy subnets. We deployed Elisity to map their entire non-human identity traffic. Through agentless policy deployment, lateral movement was eradicated instantly, creating dynamic micro-perimeters around critical care devices without touching the routing infrastructure.

Federated Identity

The cornerstone of any Identity-Centric model is a robust Single Sign-On (SSO) engine. We specialize in deep architecture mapping for the world's most ubiquitous identity stores utilized across modern enterprises.

Microsoft Entra ID

Formerly Azure AD. We architect strict conditional access policies enforcing continuous risk-based authentication.

Google Workspace

Deploying context-aware access APIs to bridge Google identities deeply into your external corporate ecosystem.

ITDR Threat Partners

Featured ITDR Partners

Integrating best-in-class Identity Threat Detection & Response platforms to surface compromised credentials, lateral movement, and privilege misuse in real time.

Stellar Cyber

Open XDR

Open XDR platform correlating identity telemetry with network detection and endpoint signals across the entire attack surface.

Deployment pattern

Detecting Compromised Service Account Lateral Movement at a European Financial Institution

A Tier-1 European bank faced an advanced persistent threat that had compromised a legacy service account with broad AD permissions. Traditional SIEM tools generated thousands of alerts but failed to correlate the slow lateral movement pattern. We deployed Stellar Cyber's Open XDR to ingest identity telemetry from Delinea, endpoint data from CrowdStrike Falcon, and network flow records simultaneously. Within 72 hours, the XDR engine surfaced a low-and-slow credential-hopping sequence spanning 14 systems. The attacker was contained before reaching the SWIFT transaction infrastructure. Post-incident, the bank reduced mean-time-to-detect for identity-based threats from 22 days to under 4 hours.

CrowdStrike

Identity Protection

Falcon Identity Protection stops credential-based attacks in real time by combining endpoint telemetry with identity threat intelligence and behavioral AI.

Deployment pattern

Stopping a Credential-Based Attack Chain at a Critical Infrastructure Operator

A European energy grid operator experienced a targeted spear-phishing campaign that successfully harvested credentials for three domain administrator accounts. The attacker began staging tools for a potential ransomware deployment. We had deployed CrowdStrike Falcon Identity Protection across the operator's Active Directory environment as part of a broader Zero Trust engagement. Falcon's behavioral AI detected the anomalous Kerberoasting activity and the use of harvested credentials from an unrecognized device within minutes of the first lateral movement attempt. Automated containment isolated the compromised accounts and triggered incident response before any operational technology systems were reached. The operator avoided an estimated €40M+ disruption to national grid operations.

Compare the PAM shortlist

For Thycotic vs BeyondTrust and the full Delinea vs CyberArk vs BeyondTrust architecture comparison, read the briefing. Identity stores we also specify: Microsoft Entra ID and Okta.

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