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Use both. Identity and access management (IAM) is the organization-wide foundation that determines which people, workloads and service accounts can reach systems. Privileged access management (PAM) adds tighter controls around administrator-level accounts and sessions, including approval, time limits, recording, logging and alerting. During recovery, IAM makes sure the right responders can reach prioritized services; PAM limits and observes the high-impact changes that could either restore those services or extend an intrusion.
Neither control is a recovery plan. You still need a prioritized restoration sequence, isolated and tested backups, emergency access procedures and exercises that expose failures before an incident.
What IAM and PAM each control
IAM governs identities and ordinary access
IAM is the broad control layer for digital identities and their permissions across on-premises infrastructure, cloud services and applications. It normally covers employee and contractor accounts, workforce groups, workload identities, service accounts, authentication policies, role assignments and account lifecycle events such as joining, changing jobs and leaving.
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For recovery, IAM answers questions such as:
- Which recovery team members may sign in to the backup console, cloud account, hypervisor or application?
- Which systems can each responder reach, and is access read-only or administrative?
- How are identities authenticated when normal corporate services are impaired?
- How quickly can a departed employee, compromised account or unnecessary entitlement be removed?
CISA’s #StopRansomware Guide recommends IAM systems for managing roles and privileges, alongside least privilege and strong multifactor authentication (MFA).
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PAM controls the highest-impact access
PAM is a specialized layer for accounts and sessions that can change security boundaries or large amounts of data. Examples include domain-controller administrators, root or cloud super-administrators, virtualization administrators, backup operators, database administrators and emergency “break-glass” accounts.
A PAM program typically inventories privileged accounts, removes unnecessary standing privilege, stores or brokers privileged credentials, requires an approval or justification, records the session where practical, and sends activity to a monitoring system. CISA specifically describes PAM for managing and monitoring privileged access, with logging and alerting to identify unusual activity, including on domain controllers.
PAM does not replace identity governance. It depends on trustworthy identities and policies to decide who may request elevation, while adding controls around the elevated action itself.
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Why recovery makes access control harder
Normal operations assume that identity providers, management consoles, network paths and logging services are available. A major outage or ransomware event can invalidate those assumptions. Responders may need to restore identity infrastructure before they can restore applications, while an attacker may still possess valid credentials or have planted additional accounts.
Recovery also creates legitimate pressure for speed. A team may need to rebuild a directory, reconnect storage, rotate secrets, restore a database and bring a customer-facing service online in a strict order. Giving everyone broad administrator rights is fast at first but increases the chance of destructive mistakes, credential theft and lateral movement.
NIST’s Guide for Cybersecurity Event Recovery (SP 800-184, published December 22, 2016) treats recovery as a planning and prioritization problem: identify resources, determine their importance, test the plan and improve it using lessons learned. Identity controls support that plan; they do not define the restoration order by themselves.
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IAM versus PAM during recovery
| Dimension | IAM | PAM | Recovery implication |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | Identities and access privileges across applications, infrastructure and cloud services | Elevated accounts and privileged sessions, including domain-controller administration | IAM establishes who may reach recovery resources; PAM narrows and observes the actions with the greatest blast radius. |
| Primary objective | Assign, govern and remove access according to a person’s or workload’s role | Restrict, approve, monitor and audit high-impact administrative activity | Use IAM to create recovery roles, then place sensitive operations behind PAM controls. |
| Typical duration | Often a standing role or entitlement until a lifecycle or policy change | Eligible access that is activated for a task, approval window or session | Convert emergency administrator rights into short, purpose-bound elevation where the technology supports it. |
| Visibility | Account status, authentication events, group membership and entitlements | Credential checkout, elevation requests, commands or sessions, session metadata, logs and alerts | Review both who obtained access and what privileged work they performed. |
| Dependencies | Identity records, authentication factors, role assignments and policy enforcement | Privileged credentials, management workflows, recording or logging systems and an approval path | Document how each control works if a primary identity or management plane is unavailable. |
Build a recovery access design step by step
1. Prioritize the assets that must be restored
Start with business and technical impact, not with the tools already installed. List essential services, their dependencies and the order in which they must return. Include identity services, DNS, network access, virtualization, storage, backup infrastructure, security tooling and the applications that generate revenue or support safety.
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2. Define recovery roles and map minimum permissions
Create named roles such as identity recovery administrator, backup operator, storage administrator, database recovery operator and application owner. Map each role to the smallest set of systems and actions needed for a specific restoration task.
- Separate approval from execution for high-risk changes.
- Use different accounts for routine work and administration.
- Keep service accounts limited to the systems and operations they require.
- Remove inherited or broad group membership that is not needed for recovery.
- Record who owns each role and who can approve an exception.
Do not assume that a person who can restore an application also needs domain-wide administrator access. If one task genuinely requires broad authority, make that exception explicit, time-limited and monitored.
3. Require phishing-resistant MFA for critical-system accounts
CISA recommends: “Implement phishing-resistant MFA for all services, particularly for email, VPNs, and accounts that access critical systems.” Apply that requirement to recovery administrators, backup consoles, cloud control planes, remote-access gateways and any account that can alter identity or security settings.
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MFA is not a substitute for least privilege. A stolen account protected by a strong factor can still cause damage if it has unnecessary administrator rights.
4. Use just-in-time elevation for privileged work
Just-in-time (JIT) access means an administrator receives the required privilege only for a defined task and period, after which the entitlement is removed or expires. CISA’s Play ransomware advisory, published December 18, 2023, describes it as a way to provision privileged access when needed.
- The responder signs in with an individual account and phishing-resistant MFA.
- The responder selects a documented recovery task and requests the minimum role that can complete it.
- An authorized approver confirms the scope, target systems and time window, or an automated policy evaluates the request.
- The system grants the privilege for that window and records the request, approver and reason.
- The responder performs the change through the approved administrative path.
- The privilege expires or is revoked when the task ends; the owner reviews the resulting logs.
JIT is not always available for every platform, and it can fail if the approval service or identity provider is part of the outage. Where automated elevation is impossible, use a documented manual process with named approvers, short-lived credentials and an after-action review.
5. Put privileged sessions under observation
Enable logging for elevation requests, authentication, credential checkout, configuration changes and administrative sessions. Send events to a monitoring location that is separate from the systems being recovered when feasible. Define alerts for unusual login locations, new administrator creation, disabled MFA, mass permission changes, backup deletion, policy tampering and activity outside the approved recovery window.
Logs are useful only if someone can access and interpret them during an outage. Establish a retention period, clock synchronization approach, analyst ownership and a way to preserve evidence if production systems are suspected of compromise. PAM session recording can add context, but recording coverage varies by protocol and platform; do not treat an unrecorded session as proof that no risky action occurred.
6. Protect the control-plane dependencies
Document what IAM and PAM require: directory services, DNS, network routes, certificate authorities, MFA services, approval workflows, secrets stores, management servers and logging. Identify which dependencies must be restored first and which can operate in a degraded mode.
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Create emergency access that is difficult to abuse but usable when normal services fail. Store break-glass credentials offline or in a separately protected mechanism, restrict who can retrieve them, require dual authorization where practical, and alert on every use. Test the procedure without exposing live secrets. Rotate emergency credentials after use and after any suspected disclosure.
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Do not leave a single person as the only approver or the sole holder of a recovery key. Maintain an up-to-date contact roster and alternate communication method that does not depend on a potentially compromised corporate account.
7. Isolate, protect and test backups
Access controls cannot restore data that has been encrypted, deleted or silently altered. Maintain backups that are isolated from ordinary administrator paths, protected from unauthorized deletion and covered by separate credentials or approval rules. Keep at least one restoration path that an attacker who compromises production administration cannot immediately modify.
Test restoration, not merely backup completion. A useful exercise verifies that responders can authenticate, retrieve the required backup, rebuild dependencies, validate data integrity and return the service to operation. Record the time, failures, missing permissions and manual workarounds; feed those lessons back into IAM roles, PAM policies and the recovery plan.
How the controls work across an incident
| Recovery phase | IAM responsibilities | PAM responsibilities |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation | Maintain role definitions, lifecycle processes, MFA enrollment and an inventory of human and workload identities. | Inventory privileged accounts, remove standing rights where possible, define approval paths, configure logging and protect emergency credentials. |
| Containment | Disable suspected accounts, revoke sessions and tighten access to affected systems without locking out the approved response team. | Stop unapproved elevation, rotate privileged secrets, review active sessions and alert on administrator activity that does not match the response plan. |
| Rebuild | Provision clean responder identities and narrowly scoped roles; restore identity dependencies in a known order. | Broker administrator actions on rebuilt infrastructure, require task-based elevation and capture changes to directory, virtualization and backup systems. |
| Service restoration | Grant application and operations teams only the access required for validation and handoff. | Keep high-risk changes behind approval and monitoring until the environment is declared stable. |
| Return to normal | Remove temporary roles, close accounts created for the incident and reconcile entitlements with the approved baseline. | Expire emergency elevation, rotate credentials, review session records and document anomalies or policy exceptions. |
Implementing IAM for a recovery-ready environment
Keep an authoritative identity and entitlement inventory
Know which identities exist, who owns them, where they authenticate and what they can reach. Include cloud-only accounts, local administrators, machine identities, API keys, certificates, scheduled-task accounts and vendor or contractor access. Mark dormant, shared and emergency accounts for additional review.
Design roles around tasks, not organizational titles
“Infrastructure administrator” is usually too broad for a recovery policy. A task-based role such as “restore virtual machines from the isolated repository” is easier to approve, test and revoke. Review role membership after organizational changes and after every exercise.
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Make authentication resilient without weakening it
Provide more than one approved phishing-resistant factor for essential responders, but keep enrollment and replacement under controlled procedures. Document what happens if a factor is lost, a device is unavailable or the primary identity provider is offline. Never solve an outage by permanently disabling MFA on critical accounts.
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Start with the privileged-account inventory
Find built-in administrators, domain or directory roles, cloud superuser accounts, hypervisor administrators, backup operators, database owners, network-device accounts and embedded credentials in scripts. Identify accounts that can change security policy or erase recovery data even if they are not labeled “administrator.”
Separate credential custody from routine administration
Use individual named accounts for attribution. Store or broker shared privileged credentials through a controlled mechanism, rotate them after use, and prevent administrators from copying them into unmanaged notes or scripts. Service accounts need an owner, a purpose, a rotation method and a documented dependency map.
Make monitoring actionable
Alert on privilege requests that exceed the recovery plan, access outside approved windows, changes to MFA or logging, creation of new privileged identities, disabling of backup protections and commands that alter large numbers of systems. Assign an on-call owner for each alert; an alert without a response path is not a recovery control.
Common failure modes and fixes
| Failure mode | Why it is dangerous | Practical correction |
|---|---|---|
| One “recovery administrator” account shared by the team | There is no reliable attribution, and one exposed password grants broad access. | Issue named accounts, require strong MFA, and use a controlled emergency account only when normal identity services are unavailable. |
| Permanent domain or cloud administrator rights for responders | A compromised responder account can alter identity, backups and every dependent service. | Replace standing rights with task-based roles and JIT elevation where supported; document unavoidable exceptions. |
| MFA enforced for employees but not for service or emergency accounts | Attackers often target the less-protected path to critical systems. | Apply phishing-resistant authentication where the platform supports it, protect noninteractive credentials and monitor every emergency-account use. |
| PAM depends on the same failed identity or network plane | The control may be unavailable precisely when privileged access must be restricted. | Document dependencies, provide a separately protected fallback, and exercise the fallback under realistic outage conditions. |
| Backups are online but administrators can delete them | Ransomware or an insider can destroy the apparent recovery path. | Isolate backup administration, separate credentials, restrict deletion and test restoration from the protected copy. |
| Logs are collected but never reviewed | Evidence of account takeover or unauthorized changes remains undiscovered. | Define alert conditions, assign responders and include log review in recovery exercises. |
| Access is designed once and never exercised | Hidden dependencies, expired accounts and missing permissions surface during the crisis. | Run exercises, record failures and update roles, approvals, contacts and restoration procedures. |
Do you need IAM, PAM or both?
For most organizations that operate critical systems, the answer is both, with different priorities.
| Situation | Minimum emphasis | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Small environment with few administrators and limited critical infrastructure | Establish a reliable IAM baseline first, then add focused PAM controls for the accounts that can change backups, identity or production. | Without an accurate identity and role model, a PAM deployment cannot determine who should be elevated. |
| Large hybrid or multi-cloud environment | Operate IAM and PAM together, with centralized role governance and platform-specific privileged workflows. | Access paths and administrator accounts span many control planes, increasing both entitlement sprawl and monitoring needs. |
| Recovery relies heavily on domain controllers, cloud control planes or backup consoles | Prioritize PAM for those high-impact systems while IAM defines the responder population and MFA requirements. | A single privileged action can disable authentication, erase backups or alter every dependent service. |
| Identity provider or management plane may be unavailable during an outage | Design and test emergency IAM and PAM procedures before relying on them. | Normal approval and authentication paths may not exist during the first stage of recovery. |
| Many temporary responders, contractors or rotating staff | Use lifecycle governance, narrowly scoped roles and time-bounded privileged access. | Short-lived access reduces the chance that a temporary account remains active after the incident. |
Testing and governance checklist
Use the following checklist in tabletop exercises and technical restoration tests:
- Are critical services and their restoration order documented and approved?
- Can the team identify every human, service and emergency identity needed for the first restoration tasks?
- Do critical-system accounts use phishing-resistant MFA, with a tested replacement path for lost factors?
- Can a responder request and receive only the privilege required for a named task?
- Does privileged access expire automatically, and is manual revocation available?
- Are domain, cloud, virtualization, network, database and backup administrators inventoried?
- Are privileged sessions, elevation requests and sensitive changes logged and alerted on?
- Can the organization operate if its primary identity provider, approval workflow or logging platform is unavailable?
- Are protected backups isolated from ordinary production administration?
- Has restoration been tested from the protected copy, including authentication and dependency rebuild?
- After an exercise, are temporary accounts removed, credentials rotated and entitlement changes reconciled?
Use exercise findings to update the recovery plan, not just the access tool. NIST guidance emphasizes improving plans through exercises and lessons learned; CISA guidance likewise connects least privilege, MFA, protected backups and restoration testing to ransomware resilience.
Guidance behind these recommendations
The control distinctions and recovery practices here align with CISA’s maintained #StopRansomware Guide, CISA’s #StopRansomware: Play Ransomware advisory published December 18, 2023, NIST SP 800-184, Guide for Cybersecurity Event Recovery, published December 22, 2016, and NIST IR 8374 Rev. 1, Ransomware Risk Management: A Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 Community Profile. These documents provide defensive guidance rather than comparative product testing, so implementation details and fallback designs must be adapted to each organization’s architecture.
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