Symantec PAM vs. Smallstep Platform

Symantec PAM is designed to prevent security breaches by protecting sensitive administrative credentials, controlling privileged user access, proactively enforcing security policies, and monitoring and recording privileged user activity across virtual, cloud, and physical environments. The solution provides a privileged credential vault, session recording, threat analytics, host-based access control for mission-critical servers, and application-to-application password management to address non-human actors, such as applications, configuration files, and scripts.

Smallstep is a certificate management and device identity platform that helps organizations automate encryption, authentication, and access control across devices, users, and workloads. It provides a unified approach to establishing digital trust using cryptographic certificates rather than passwords or shared secrets. Smallstep is designed for IT, security, and DevOps teams that manage distributed infrastructure across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.