PRIVILEGED ACCESS MANAGEMENT IN ENTERPRISE SECURITY: A FRAMEWORK FOR RISK MITIGATION AND COMPLIANCE

Privileged accounts are one of the most valuable assets in today's enterprise network, as they provide higher access to systems, sensitive data, and infrastructure controls. This paper introduces a 5-layer structured Privileged Access Management (PAM) framework that combines identity governance, credential and session management, access enforcement, continuous monitoring, and compliance governance into a single security architecture. The study combines insights from existing PAM literature, regulatory requirements, and simulated organizational data to illustrate the benefits of a layered PAM strategy, which includes the reduction of credential-based attack vectors, a decrease in insider misuse, and enhanced auditability. With the implementation of the proposed framework, organizations can see a significant drop in privileged-account related incidents and a significantly improved composite risk score on six risk domains based upon the comparative analysis. The paper also outlines the mapping of PAM controls to key regulatory frameworks such as NIST SP 800-53, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, PCI DSS v4.0, GDPR, and HIPAA to demonstrate how a single architecture can help mitigate risk and meet multi-jurisdictional compliance requirements. The findings provide actionable advice for security architects, compliance officers and enterprise risk managers looking to modernize privileged access governance.