What is Native Zero Trust Remote PAM?

By the year 2026, organisations embracing least privilege approaches to RPAM use cases are projected to significantly reduce their risk exposure, by more than 50%.

Native Zero Trust remote PAM: what is it, and what are the benefits?

For privileged users connecting remotely, native Zero Trust PAM is designed to manage privileged access by applying Zero Trust principles. It allows organisations to enforce the principle of least privilege by operating under the assumption that all privileged users and devices pose potential security threats. The connection between end users’ devices and the organisation’s systems is highly secured by features such as URL rewriting, random port generation, and restricting the connection to the period or the conditions of use. Zero Trust remote PAM also allows organisations to implement contextual and dynamic security controls, which identify potential threats and malicious user activities in real time and promptly revoke access or trigger automated responses.

Why do we need remote PAM?

Organisations’ ecosystems are expanding, increasing the number of third-party service providers that need to access IT or OT systems. At the same time, remote working has grown since the COVID pandemic, creating the urge to secure remote access for privileged users. Remote PAM emerges as a critical solution to fortify security posture, mitigate risks and uphold the integrity of IT and OT systems.

Remote PAM has a wide range of use cases

• An organisation’s IT administrators.
• External IT or OT service providers.
• Operational technology (OT) maintenance and help desk users.
• Anyone connecting remotely to critical IT or OT systems.

VPN vs remote PAM

Organisations’ security needs are evolving because the scope of the corporate network has changed: we cannot consider the corporate network as the security perimeter anymore. The paradigm is no longer “inside safe, outside danger”. Hence the shift in the way remote access use cases are approached. The security perimeter has changed, and technologies designed for the network as the security perimeter, such as VPN technology, may become a risk in this new landscape.

That is why Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) technologies have emerged and are being used increasingly. The table below summarises the differences between VPN and ZTNA.

What is Zero Trust?

Conventional Privileged Access Management provides basic features that are no longer enough to secure remote privileged access. A Zero Trust approach should be adopted in this context. But what is Zero Trust about — is it a marketing buzzword?

Zero Trust is a security framework that requires ongoing verification and authorisation for all users attempting to access enterprise resources, thereby preventing unauthorised access. This approach ensures that users and devices are never trusted, even when connected to the organisation’s network. By adopting the “never trust, always verify” approach, organisations can swiftly detect and block malicious activities in real time — a capability often lacking in traditional perimeter-based security strategies.

In traditional approaches, users and devices are granted static access to IT resources within the network perimeter. Consequently, if an attacker infiltrates the organisation’s network, they can freely navigate within it and compromise critical resources and data. This highlights the significance of Zero Trust in modern organisations.

Zero Trust is a comprehensive strategy designed to be implemented across the entire infrastructure. It allows administrators to impose additional restrictions on select critical systems and accounts, shielding them from both internal and external threats and minimising the risk of data breaches.

The effectiveness of Zero Trust has made it a widely discussed topic in cybersecurity. It is definitely not just marketing buzz, but a basis of modern access security.

Native Zero Trust RPAM tools offer several benefits

• They enable least privilege principles, effectively blocking lateral movement and reducing the risk of infected endpoints.
• They allow time-bound, session-specific, just-in-time access.
• They facilitate privileged access management for external users.
• They enable a VPN-less approach, enhancing flexibility and security.

What to consider when searching for an RPAM tool

• Considering the identity of people ensures that access privileges are aligned with individual roles and responsibilities, reducing the risk of unauthorised access.
• Evaluating the identity of assets helps organisations prioritise protection measures based on the criticality and sensitivity of the resources, enhancing overall security posture.
• Addressing the identity of processes involves understanding the workflows and procedures through which access is granted, ensuring compliance and accountability.
• Defining access entails establishing clear criteria and policies governing who can access what resources under what circumstances, fostering transparency and control over privileged access.

The CyberElements RPAM key features

cyberelements.io is the security platform for business performance, designed to seamlessly secure remote privileged access. It is a single platform for all your organisation’s use cases.

Security by design: a Zero Trust access infrastructure

The platform is built on a Zero Trust access infrastructure, characterised by a fundamental shift from the traditional perimeter-based security model, emphasising continuous verification of user identity and device trust before granting access to resources.

Thanks to its double barrier architecture, this infrastructure ensures that no application or resource is exposed to the network by default, reducing the attack surface and mitigating the risk of unauthorised access or data breaches.

By implementing random and volatile ports, along with protocol breaks and dynamic posture checks, a Zero Trust access infrastructure provides a resilient security framework that adapts to evolving threats and user behaviour, ensuring a secure and scalable access control mechanism.

Built-in Zero Trust

• Continuous and dynamic posture checks, ensuring that access is granted based on the real-time security status of the user’s device.
• Continuous and dynamic behaviour and context checks of end users and their devices, allowing access privileges to adapt instantly to user activity and potential risks.
• Zero Trust by design, guaranteeing that no application or resource is exposed to the network by default. Critical resources are protected against brute-force attacks and access attempts by, for example, only outgoing flows with no port opening, and URL rewriting on the server side. This forces access to an IT or OT resource to go through the RPAM product.
• Random and volatile ports, enhancing security by minimising predictability and making it more difficult for potential attackers to exploit vulnerabilities.
• Protocol breaks, disrupting conventional attack methods and bolstering security defences for a more resilient infrastructure against emerging threats.
• Isolation technology, restricting access to only image display and mouse and keyboard flow, minimising the attack surface and providing a highly secure environment for privileged access.
• Less resource-consuming scalability, ensuring optimal performance and cost-effectiveness while maintaining robust security, suitable for organisations of varying sizes and resource constraints.

Key functionalities

• Session recording and auditing, allowing organisations to maintain detailed logs of all privileged access activities for compliance, forensic analysis and security incident response. The video recordings can sit on your premises or in the cloud, depending on your preference.
• Advanced search, providing visibility into privileged sessions and the ability to track user activities. It allows you to identify potential security breaches or policy violations, enhancing governance, risk management and overall security posture, and making detailed forensic analysis much easier.
• Double barrier architecture with a mediation controller and edge gateways, acting as a secure entry point for privileged users and enforcing strong authentication and access controls so that only authorised individuals gain entry to critical resources.
• Robust authorisation mechanisms, enabling organisations to enforce least privilege principles and grant users only the access they need for their specific tasks or roles.
• Just-in-time access, dynamically provisioning access privileges on a per-session basis and granting temporary, time-bound access only when needed — minimising the exposure window and limiting the opportunity for exploitation or misuse.
• A robust local identity store, enabling organisations to securely manage and authenticate privileged user accounts within their internal systems, enhancing control and visibility over access permissions and credentials.
• Identity federation, extending access management beyond organisational boundaries, allowing seamless integration with external identity providers and enabling federated authentication.
• Advanced session management, providing administrators with granular control over privileged sessions and allowing them to monitor, terminate or record sessions in real time — enhancing accountability and auditability while ensuring compliance with security policies.
• Password vaulting and credential injection, allowing organisations to securely store and manage privileged credentials, eliminating the need for users to enter passwords manually and reducing the risk of credential theft or misuse.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO), adding a further layer of security to privileged access by requiring multiple forms of verification, or enabling seamless access to multiple resources with a single set of credentials.

Finally, it is worth saying that security is not about creating walls. It is about giving the right people the right access to the right resources at the right time, in a secure and compliant manner. This is why, at CyberElements, our mission is to provide organisations with a converged secure platform to manage access and comply. Your RPAM solution is deployable in 3 minutes, can easily be scaled up, and delivers an intuitive user experience.