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Accelerate AI SecurelyEnable secure AI adoption with visibility, governance, and control across identities, agents, and accessDefend Against AI AttacksProtect your organization from AI-driven threats by securing identities, controlling access, and reducing attack paths.Cyber InsuranceImprove your cyber insurance readiness with stronger identity security, governance, and privileged access controls.RansomwareDefend against ransomware by securing privileged identities, limiting access, and reducing attack paths.Vendor ConsolidationReduce complexity, strengthen security and improve IT ROI through platform consolidation.Secure Remote WorkforceSecure access for employees, contractors, and third parties from anywhere.Reduce Identity RiskGain visibility, control, and continuous authorization across every identity.Financial ServicesReduce identity risk and strengthen governance across financial institutions.HealthcareSecure access to critical systems, patient data, and clinical environments.Federal & PublicSupport secure access, compliance, and operational resilience across public sector enterprises.Energies & Critical InfrastructureProtect critical systems and privileged access across essential infrastructure.EducationProtect your educational institution from ransomware and data misuse.VisibilityDiscover every human, machine, and AI identity across your environment.PostureIdentify excessive privileges, policy gaps, and emerging identity risks.ControlApply authorization and access policies to every identity, session, and action.Human IdentitiesSecure workforce, privileged, and third-party identities.Machine IdentitiesProtect secrets, credentials, certificates, and non-human identities.Agentic IdentitiesGovern and control access for AI agents and autonomous systems.Cloud StatusCheck availability and service health across Delinea cloud services.Customer SupportGet product support, technical guidance, and help from Delinea experts.Identity Security Maturity ModelAssess your identity security maturity and identify priorities for improvement.Professional ServicesAccelerate deployment, adoption, and value with expert implementation and advisory services.Trust CenterAccess Delinea security, privacy, compliance, and assurance information.User TrainingBuild product knowledge and skills with Delinea training and learning resources.
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The Delinea PlatformA unified identity security platform that protects human, machine and AI identities across your enterprise.Delinea Iris AIAI-powered intelligence that delivers real-time insights, automation and continuous authorization.Secret ServerSecure privileged credentials with enterprise password vaulting and session management.Continuous Identity DiscoveryContinuously discover and inventory every identity across your enterprise.Credential ManagerManage, rotate and protect privileged credentials across hybrid and cloud environments.Fastpath Access GovernanceAutomate access governance, segregation of duties and compliance reporting.Privilege Control for ServersEnforce least privilege and application control across Windows and Linux servers.Privileged Remote AccessProvide secure remote access for employees and third parties without exposing privileged credentialsFull Product ListingBrowse the complete Delinea product portfolio and find the right solution for your enterprise.Why Delinea FastpathDiscover how Delinea Fastpath helps enterprises govern access, reduce risk and strengthen compliance across critical business applications.Delinea Fastpath Access ControlIdentify Segregation of Duties conflicts and sensitive access risk within and across business applications.Delinea Fastpath Access ReviewAutomate user access reviews and generate clear, consistent audit evidence with less manual effort.Delinea Fastpath Change TrackingMonitor critical permission, configuration and data changes across business applications.Delinea Fastpath Access ProvisioningAutomate compliant access requests, approvals, provisioning and deprovisioning.Delinea vs CyberArkCompare Delinea and CyberArk to see how the platforms differ in identity security, deployment and ease of use.Delinea vs BeyondTrustExplore the key differences between Delinea and BeyondTrust across privileged access and identity security.Delinea vs MicrosoftSee how Delinea extends beyond native Microsoft capabilities to deliver comprehensive identity security.Delinea vs One IdentitySee how Delinea authorizes every action at runtime, keeps credentials off users and AI agents and supports your identity provider.Delinea vs SaviyntExplore how Delinea and Saviynt compare across identity security, governance and privileged access.
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All ResourcesBrowse Delinea’s complete library of educational content and resources.BlogsStay up to date with the latest identity security insights and industry trends.VideosWatch product demonstrations, customer stories and educational content.WebinarsJoin expert-led webinars covering identity security and best practices.EventsDiscover upcoming conferences, webinars and Delinea events.EbooksDownload in-depth guides, research and educational resources.GlossaryUnderstand key identity security, cybersecurity, and privileged access terms with Delinea’s comprehensive glossary.PodcastEnjoy freshly brewed hot takes with our Grounds for Access podcast.Product DocumentationAccess technical guides, product documentation, and implementation resources.Solution BriefsLearn how Delinea solutions address specific business and security challenges.Trust CenterReview security, compliance, privacy, and trust-related information.
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Customer SuccessMaximize the value of your Delinea investment with expert guidance and ongoing success planning.Professional ServicesAccelerate deployment and optimize your identity security strategy with Delinea experts.User TrainingBuild product knowledge and develop expertise through Delinea training and certification programs.Cloud StatusView the real-time status and availability of Delinea cloud services.Customer CommunityConnect with peers, share knowledge and discover best practices from the Delinea community.Integrations MarketplaceExplore integrations that extend and enhance the Delinea Platform across your technology ecosystem.Product DocumentationAccess technical documentation, product guides, APIs and implementation resources.Technical SupportGet expert assistance, troubleshoot issues and manage support requests.Trust CenterReview Delinea’s security, compliance, privacy and trust information.
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About DelineaLearn about Delinea’s mission, vision, and approach to identity security.The Delinea DifferenceDiscover what sets Delinea apart in securing human, machine, and AI identities.Leadership TeamMeet the leaders driving Delinea’s strategy and innovation.Contact UsConnect with our teams around the world.
Delinea vs. AWS SSM Session Manager: Side-by-Side Comparison
Both AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Session Manager and Delinea are solutions for gaining remote access to critical infrastructure. Yet, while they share some of the same capabilities required of an enterprise access management platform, the execution and the ultimate goals they accomplish for security and compliance teams are very different.
While AWS provides an effective solution for specific AWS session access requirements, Delinea uses a fine-grained approach that emphasizes actions rather than access from the beginning of a session through the end.
Let’s review the details of both solutions to understand why Delinea is the best choice for your organization’s overall access management strategy.
What Is AWS SSM Session Manager?
AWS SSM Session Manager is a remote access management service that allows users to establish remote SSH and RDP sessions to Linux, macOS, and Windows servers hosted on AWS or on-prem, without maintaining bastion hosts or opening inbound firewall ports. Sessions can be browser-based or initiated with the AWS CLI.
What Is Delinea?
Delinea Zero Trust Privileged Access Management Platform (PAM) allows IAM and security teams to manage the access lifecycle to critical infrastructure comprehensively. Delinea helps manage access to cloud-based and on-prem infrastructure, from legacy to cloud-native, with dynamic access workflows and continuous context-based authorization, in a frustration-free way while maintaining a strong security posture. It supports the needs of IT and related teams, including
- DevOps: DevOps teams can provision and de-provision access to specific instances, servers, or databases with a few clicks. Users can access all of their critical infrastructure using their native tools and protocols, not forcing feature-deficient and proprietary web-based interfaces.
- Security & Compliance: Sessions can be continuously authorized with “just enough” friction, using Strong Policies with contextual security signals, such as user device posture and location, to authorize access and actions without impacting the user’s experience or productivity. Security and compliance teams gain full visibility into “who did what when,” on each system, including video playback of what individual users have executed on specific systems. For continuous compliance, maintains records of, “who was in each system and what were they doing” at any given point in time.
- Admins: Access to critical infrastructure can be granted and revoked quickly and easily, greatly simplifying user onboarding and offboarding, provisioning for third parties, and the ability to provide access for a specified period of time. Users, roles, and access are easily managed via an Admin UI (CLI available as well).
Delinea and AWS Session Manager: What’s the Difference?
While ostensibly seeking to perform similar operations, these two solutions approach the task of access management and control through very different methods. The differences in approaches govern what each is able to achieve, as you can see in this outline of key solution elements.
1. Agentless Architecture
Delinea does not require agents to be installed on end resources. This means fewer administrative headaches in managing the solution and faster time-to-value for the product. Session Manager requires the installation of the SSM agent for the operating systems supported (Linux, macOS, and Windows), which complicates the ongoing maintenance of the managed nodes.
2. Support for All Protocols
Session Manager is limited to SSH and Windows PowerShell sessions (RDP is available via Systems Manager Fleet Manager). Delinea is built for the modern stack, with cloud-native support for dozens of protocols. It lets you monitor and manage access to servers (SSH and RDP), multiple clouds (including AWS), Kubernetes clusters, and many different database types, from legacy to cloud-native. It supports almost everything in your environment.
3. Flexible Access
Session Manager requires that access to go through a web browser or via the AWS CLI. Delinea does not force the use of a particular client or a web browser to connect to the supported resources. The user can access resources using their favorite GUI or CLI clients, allowing for maximum flexibility without impacting productivity.
4. Dynamic Access Workflows
Session Manager relies on IAM permissions only. Delinea, on the other hand, employs fully dynamic workflows, whether from the administrative UI, Slack, or ServiceNow. This allows for Just-in-Time access to critical infrastructure, removing standing privileges, which decreases the risk of insider threats.
5. Proxy Architecture
Delinea is a proxy that combines authentication, authorization, networking, and observability capabilities for your environment. This architecture simplifies access workflows by providing low-friction connectivity to virtually every piece of infrastructure in your stack. A high degree of security posture is maintained with fully encrypted tunnels, visibility of every session, and dynamic credential injection between the Delinea Gateway and your vault of choice for all supported protocols and resource types. This ensures that end-users are never exposed to credentials. Delinea also supports end-to-end passwordless authentication with certificate-based authentication for SSH and RDP, and IAM authentication support for EKS and RDS PostgreSQL (Aurora and regular PostgreSQL).
6. Continuous Authorization
The Strong Policy Engine allows continuous Zero-Trust access to critical infrastructure. Policies are managed centrally, while being enforced in a distributed way on enforcement points near the resources being accessed. This allows for continuous, real-time assessment of a user’s security posture, and uses that context to allow, deny, or challenge a user’s session from continuing. The Zero Policy Engine also implements policies with fine-grained permissions of actions on resources.
Delinea: A Complete Access Solution
Session Manager provides a limited set of protocols and features, which is sufficient for AWS-only implementations. Delinea, by contrast, allows for more complete coverage of all resource types across more environments–from legacy infrastructure to cloud-native and from on-prem to Cloud.
| Delinea | AWS SSM | |
|---|---|---|
| Breadth of Resources |
||
| SSH to Linux | ✔ | ✔ |
| RDP to Windows | ✔ | ✔ |
| Azure Cloud | ✔ | ✗ |
| GCP Cloud | ✔ | ✗ |
| HTTP Support | ✔ | ✗ |
| Databases(1) | ✔ | ✗ |
| Kubernetes Clusters(1) | ✔ | ✗ |
| Breadth of Authentication / IAM |
||
| AWS IAM | ✔ | ✔ |
| Certificates | ✔ | ✗ |
| Active Directory | ✔ | ✗ |
| Legacy Authentication with Vault of Choice | ✔ | ✗ |
| Auditing & Logging |
||
| Records Session Replays for SSH and RDP | ✔ | ✔ |
| Records Database Queries | ✔ | ✗ |
| Records Kubernetes Admin Actions | ✔ | ✗ |
| Logs directly to Cloudwatch(2) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Deployment |
||
| Multi-Cloud | ✔ | ✗ |
| Works On-Premises | ✔ | ✔ |
| Agentless | ✔ | ✗ |
| Bring your own client(3) | ✔ | ✗ |
| Reverse proxy architecture | ✔ | ✗ |
| Access Control & Workflows | ||
| Dynamic Access Grants by Policy | ✔ | ✔ |
| Approval Workflows with Delinea client, Slack and ServiceNow | ✔ | ✗ |
| Works with any SSO (SAML & OIDC) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Context-based access | ✔ | ✗ |
| Continuous Policy-based access | ✔ | ✗ |
(1) On-prem, cloud-managed, and self-managed;
(2) Delinea streams logs directly to S3, where they can easily be imported into CloudWatch;
(3) SSM requires a web browser or AWS-CLI clients.
Conclusion
Delinea is built for an organization's entire technical staff, not just developers. It’s easy for end users to adopt because it seamlessly integrates with existing tools and workflows, including identity providers and vault solutions. Delinea has superior reliability and a cost-effective pricing model.
To see Delinea in action, book a demo.
