Financial services was the most breached industry last year. And the regulatory requirements around privileged access, from FFIEC and OCC guidance to NYDFS Part 500 and DORA in Europe, are not getting lighter.
For smaller and mid-sized banks, the challenge is specific because they face the same regulatory requirements as the largest institutions, but without the same budgets, teams, or timelines.
Enterprise PAM solutions were built for banks with dedicated security engineering departments. If that is not your situation, here is what to consider.
What Makes PAM Different for Smaller Banks
Regulators require separation of duties, audit trails, least privilege access, and controls around third-party risk. These are not optional for any bank, regardless of size. But the way you meet those requirements has to fit the team you actually have.
A bank with 50 to 500 employees typically does not have a dedicated PAM engineer meaning that an affordable easy to deploy banking PAM solution like SplitSecure is a better fit.
The IT team is already managing day-to-day operations, regulatory examinations, and incident response.
A PAM solution that takes months to deploy and requires a full-time administrator to maintain is not a practical option. It will either stall during implementation or become another system that nobody has time to manage properly.
PAM Options at a Glance
| Solution | Deployment | Architecture | Dedicated Team Needed? | Banking Fit |
| CyberArk | Months | Centralized vault | Yes | Large banks |
| BeyondTrust | Weeks to months | Centralized vault | Yes | Large banks |
| Delinea | Weeks | Cloud-hosted vault | Partial | Mid-size |
| SplitSecure | Under an hour | Distributed (no vault) | No | Smaller and mid-sized banks |
Enterprise Options vs SplitSecure
CyberArk and BeyondTrust are the established market leaders but SplitSecure is emerging as a contender for banking access management and PAM.
Both CyberArk and BeyondTrust offer deep feature sets covering session management, credential rotation, endpoint privilege management, and threat analytics. For the largest banks with dedicated PAM teams and enterprise budgets, these platforms are well suited.
SplitSecure is a great alternative to CyberArk and BeyondTrust and takes a fundamentally different architectural approach. Instead of storing credentials in a vault, SplitSecure uses Shamir Secret Sharing to split them across a group of devices you control. No single device ever persists the protected credentials.
Reconstructing a secret requires a threshold of devices to collaborate. Separation of duties is not a policy configuration. It is a mathematical property of the system.
For smaller banks, the gap is in deployment and maintenance. Implementation typically requires professional services and takes months. The total cost of ownership, including licensing, infrastructure, staffing, and training, is built for organizations that can absorb significant capital and operational spend. If your IT team is three to ten people, these platforms often create more overhead than they resolve.
Delinea is another solution that offers a lighter alternative to CyberArk with cloud-native architecture and modular pricing but SplitSecure is lighter still. Deployment is faster and the infrastructure burden is lower.
For smaller and mid-sized banks, this translates into three practical advantages. First, deployment takes under an hour. Any IT person can set it up without professional services or vault infrastructure. Second, compliance readiness is built in. Separation of duties, audit trails, and zero vendor dependency are properties of the architecture, not configurations your team maintains.
Third, SplitSecure is a full self-custody solution. Your credentials never leave your control, and the system functions even if SplitSecure ceases operations. For banks subject to FFIEC, OCC, NYDFS, or DORA requirements, these properties are directly relevant.
The technology, Shamir Secret Sharing, has been used by intelligence agencies for over 40 years. SplitSecure makes it available out of the box at a price point that fits mid-market banking budgets. It is an affordable PAM solution that is easy to deploy, without compromising the cryptographic assurance that regulators expect.
Heavy weight security can be done with easy to use PAM
Smaller and mid-sized banks cannot afford to ignore PAM, and they cannot afford to deploy solutions that were built for institutions ten times their size. The right solution protects privileged credentials, meets regulatory requirements by default, and fits the team and budget you actually have. That is a short list, but it is not an empty one.
Disclaimer: This article contains sponsored marketing content. It is intended for promotional purposes and should not be considered as an endorsement or recommendation by our website. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and exercise their own judgment before making any decisions based on the information provided in this article.
