Privileged Identity Management

Privileged Identity Management (PIM) is a domain within Identity Management focused on the special requirements of powerful accounts within the IT infrastructure of an enterprise. It is frequently used as an Information Security and governance tool to help companies in meeting compliance regulations and to prevent internal data breaches through the use of privileged accounts. The management of privileged identities can be automated to follow pre-determined or customized policies and requirements for an organization or industry.

Please also see Privileged password management -- since the usual strategy for securing privileged identities is to periodically scramble their passwords; securely store current password values and control disclosure of those passwords.

Some industry participants argue that a more apt term for this domain is Privileged Access Management since the usual approach to this problem space is to mediate access to pre-existing privileged accounts or to grant temporary privilege elevation to authorized users, rather than creating, governing, disabling or deleting privileged accounts.