Privileged access used to be a human problem. But the most powerful identities in today’s enterprise aren’t people. They’re service accounts, APIs, machine identities, and AI agents operating at a scale and speed traditional PAM was never built for. 

Most PAM programs don’t stall because of a lack of tools. They stall because of people and process. Change management overhead and brittle workflows create so much friction that users find workarounds. Sound familiar? 

In this session, Rob Ainscough cuts through the theory and focuses on what actually works. Drawing from real-world experience running IAM at a large UK retailer, he’ll walk through practical patterns for securing privileged access across humans, machines, legacy systems, cloud, and AI without grinding the business to a halt. You’ll learn when vaults and session controls help, when they hurt, and how just-in-time approaches can remove standing privilege, limit lateral movement, and scale without breaking workflows. 

You’ll leave with clear takeaways, fewer abstractions, and a practical way to use executive anxiety around AI constructively to drive alignment, funding, and momentum for PAM programs—positioning modern privileged access as a business enabler, not another security tax.