Which mechanism focuses on securing accounts with elevated privileges and monitoring their activity?

• A. Privileged Access Management
• B. Credential Management
• C. Hardware Key Manager
• D. Password Policies

Answer: (A)

Privileged Access Management focuses on protecting accounts with elevated privileges and tracking their activity. These accounts can unlock many systems and data, so they’re prime targets for attackers and insiders. PAM solutions vault and rotate privileged credentials, enforce just-in-time access, require strong authentication, and monitor and audit privileged sessions to detect unusual activity and enforce accountability. This combination of credential control and ongoing monitoring is what makes PAM the best fit for securing high-privilege accounts. The other options are broader or unrelated: credential management covers handling credentials in general without specific emphasis on privileged sessions; hardware key managers deal with cryptographic keys stored in hardware; and password policies set rules for passwords but don’t focus on privileged access monitoring.