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How 12Port differs from legacy PAM.
Most PAM platforms were designed before agentless brokering, before AI agents needed privileged access, and before MSPs needed multi-tenancy from day one. 12Port was built for what privileged access actually looks like in 2026.
Four differences
What 12Port does that legacy PAM does not.
CyberArk, BeyondTrust, and Delinea built their architectures when network perimeters mattered, when AI agents weren’t a privileged-access concern, and when most operators worked from a Windows desktop on the corporate LAN. 12Port differs in four ways that matter to how privileged access actually runs today.
Agentless broker, not agent fleet
Most PAM still assumes a thick agent on every endpoint. 12Port brokers RDP, SSH, PowerShell, VNC, Telnet, and HTTP(s) through a server-side broker. Nothing on the endpoint, nothing on the target.
AI agents are first-class users
Legacy PAM treats automation as a service-account afterthought. 12Port speaks Model Context Protocol natively. AI agents authenticate, request actions, and run them through the same broker as humans.
Multi-tenant by design
Most platforms bolt tenancy on. 12Port runs MSPs and multi-business-unit enterprises from one control plane with isolated tenants, per-tenant audit, and per-tenant reporting.
Hours, not months, to deploy
Legacy PAM rollouts take quarters. Connect 12Port to your IdP, point it at your assets, and broker your first privileged session the same day. Agentless means no inventory project first.
Side-by-side
Compare 12Port against the platform you have today.
Side-by-side comparisons against the three vendors customers most often replace with 12Port. Each comparison is grounded in published platform documentation, not marketing slides.
12Port vs. CyberArk
Agent footprint, deployment time, AI agent support, multi-tenancy, and licensing model side-by-side. Where CyberArk wins, where 12Port wins, where they differ on architecture.
12Port vs. BeyondTrust
Privilege Management Cloud vs. 12Port broker, session recording fidelity, AI agent strategy, and per-named-user vs per-target licensing.
12Port vs. Delinea
Secret Server + Privilege Manager vs. 12Port unified broker. Agentless reach, MSP fit, and credential-injection model compared end-to-end.