StrongDM: The Complete Guide to Zero Trust Infrastructure Access

1. Introduction

Every engineering team wrestles with the same question: who should have access to what, and how do we prove it? As infrastructure sprawls across multiple clouds, databases, Kubernetes clusters, and legacy servers, managing privileged access becomes a security nightmare. VPNs are too broad. Shared credentials are too risky. Manual provisioning is too slow.

StrongDM is a Zero Trust Privileged Access Management (PAM) platform designed to solve exactly this problem. Instead of giving people keys to the kingdom, StrongDM acts as a secure proxy — granting just-in-time, just-enough access to infrastructure with full session logging and policy enforcement. No shared passwords. No VPN tunnels. No standing privileges.

This guide covers everything you need to evaluate, deploy, and get value from StrongDM — whether you're an engineer tired of SSH key chaos, a security lead preparing for SOC 2, or a CTO modernizing your access stack.

2. What Is StrongDM?

StrongDM is a policy-based Zero Trust Privileged Access Management platform that combines authentication, authorization, networking, and observability into a single solution. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Burlingame, California, the company has raised over $54 million in funding and serves hundreds of enterprises worldwide.^[1]

At its core, StrongDM is an infrastructure access proxy. Rather than giving engineers direct credentials to databases, servers, or Kubernetes clusters, StrongDM sits between users and resources. When someone needs access, they request it through StrongDM, which validates their identity, checks policy, provisions ephemeral credentials, opens the connection, and logs every action — then revokes access when the session ends.

The Problem StrongDM Solves

Traditional infrastructure access is broken in several ways:

• Shared credentials — Teams share database passwords, SSH keys, and API tokens. When someone leaves, rotating all credentials is painful and often skipped.
• VPN sprawl — VPNs grant broad network access, violating least privilege. Once inside the tunnel, lateral movement is trivially easy.
• Manual provisioning — Onboarding a new engineer means creating accounts across dozens of systems. Offboarding means remembering to revoke them all.
• Audit gaps — Who accessed the production database at 3 AM? With shared credentials and no session recording, you'll never know.
• Compliance burden — SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI DSS all require demonstrable access controls and audit trails. Cobbling this together from disparate tools is a full-time job.

StrongDM replaces this patchwork with a unified control plane: one place to manage who can access what, under what conditions, for how long, with every session recorded and queryable.^[2]

How It Works (Architecture)

StrongDM uses a gateway + relay architecture:

• StrongDM Gateway — A lightweight component deployed in your network (or VPC) that proxies connections to your resources. No inbound ports required.
• StrongDM Client — A desktop app (Mac, Windows, Linux) or CLI that engineers use to connect. It authenticates via your IdP (Okta, Azure AD, Google, etc.) and presents available resources.
• Control Plane — The cloud-hosted (or self-hosted) management layer where admins define resources, roles, policies, and access workflows.

When an engineer connects to a database through StrongDM, the client routes traffic through the gateway, which injects ephemeral credentials, opens the connection to the target resource, and streams the session log back to the control plane. The engineer never sees the actual password.^[3]

3. Key Features

3.1 Zero Trust Access

StrongDM continuously evaluates access throughout every session — not just at login. Context-based policies can factor in device trust, IP address, time of day, and role to determine whether a connection should be allowed, monitored, or terminated.^[4]

3.2 Just-in-Time (JIT) Access

Instead of standing privileges, engineers request access when they need it. Requests flow through approval workflows (Slack, Teams, ServiceNow, Jira) with automatic expiration. No more "I still have prod access from that incident six months ago."^[5]

3.3 100+ Protocol Support

StrongDM natively supports connections to:

• Databases — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Oracle, SQL Server, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and more
• Servers — SSH (Linux/Unix), RDP (Windows)
• Kubernetes — kubectl, Helm, and K8s API access
• Cloud consoles — AWS, GCP, Azure management consoles
• Web applications — Any internal web app via HTTP proxy

3.4 Ephemeral Credentials

StrongDM generates short-lived, single-use credentials for every connection. Engineers never see or store passwords. When a session ends, the credential is automatically revoked. This eliminates credential sprawl and shared password risk.^[3]

3.5 Session Recording & Audit Logs

Every query, command, and keystroke is logged. SSH sessions are recorded as replayable videos. Database queries are captured with full context. Audit logs can be exported to SIEM tools or streamed to AWS S3 for long-term retention.^[6]

3.6 Policy Engine

Define fine-grained policies based on roles, attributes, device posture, network context, and time. Policies can allow, deny, or require approval for specific actions. For example: "Junior engineers can read from staging databases but need manager approval for production write access."^[4]

3.7 Identity Provider Integration

StrongDM integrates with all major IdPs: Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, OneLogin, and any SAML 2.0 or OIDC provider. Users authenticate once through their existing SSO, and StrongDM handles the rest.

3.8 Vault & Secret Store Integration

Native support for HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, GCP Secret Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk, and Delinea. StrongDM can pull credentials from your existing vault — no migration needed.^[2]

4. Use Cases

🔐 Replacing Legacy PAM

Companies like Bullhorn migrated from CyberArk to StrongDM, eliminating weekend outages, license juggling, and poor user experiences. StrongDM's agentless architecture and modern UX dramatically reduced operational overhead.^[7]

☁️ Multi-Cloud Access Management

Organizations running workloads across AWS, GCP, and Azure use StrongDM as a single access layer across all clouds. Instead of managing IAM roles, VPN tunnels, and bastion hosts per cloud, StrongDM provides unified access with consistent policies.

🚫 VPN Elimination

StrongDM replaces VPNs for infrastructure access. Instead of broad network access through a tunnel, engineers get granular, resource-level access through StrongDM's proxy — reducing attack surface and improving performance.

📋 SOC 2 & Compliance

StrongDM's comprehensive audit logs, session recordings, and access controls map directly to SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI DSS requirements. Companies report cutting audit preparation time by 80% after deploying StrongDM.^[7]

👤 User Lifecycle Management

When an engineer joins, StrongDM provisions access based on their role — automatically. When they leave or change teams, access is revoked instantly across all resources. No manual cleanup across dozens of systems.

🏗️ Kubernetes Access

Managing kubectl access across multiple clusters is notoriously complex. StrongDM provides policy-controlled Kubernetes access with full command logging, namespace-level permissions, and JIT approval workflows.

5. How People Use It on X

StrongDM has an active presence on X/Twitter, sharing customer stories and infrastructure access best practices. Here's what the community discusses:

🔥 Trending Topics

• Zero Trust implementation stories — Engineers share how they migrated from VPNs and shared credentials to StrongDM's proxy model. The most common sentiment: "I can't believe we were doing it the old way."
• Compliance success stories — Security teams celebrate passing SOC 2 audits with StrongDM's built-in audit trail. The reduction in manual evidence collection is a recurring theme.
• Developer experience praise — Engineers appreciate that StrongDM lets them use their preferred tools (DBeaver, MySQL Workbench, native kubectl) without learning new interfaces.
• Open-source contributions — StrongDM maintains Comply, an open-source SOC 2 compliance toolkit with policy templates, version control, and task tracking.^[8]

💡 Community Tips

• Start with databases — Most teams begin by routing database access through StrongDM. It provides the highest security ROI with the least disruption.
• Use JIT workflows from day one — Don't grant standing access and plan to "tighten later." Configure approval workflows immediately; engineers adapt quickly.
• Integrate with Slack/Teams — Access request and approval through chat tools dramatically improves adoption. Engineers don't need to context-switch to a separate portal.
• Export logs to your SIEM — StrongDM's audit logs become far more powerful when correlated with other security signals in Splunk, Datadog, or your SIEM of choice.
• Use device trust policies — Require managed devices or specific OS versions for production access. A quick win for security posture.

6. Getting Started

Here's how to evaluate and deploy StrongDM in your organization:

Step 1: Request a Demo or Free Trial

Visit strongdm.com and request a demo. StrongDM offers guided trials with a solutions engineer who will help you connect your first resources. There's no self-serve free tier — it's a sales-led product for teams.

Step 2: Deploy Your First Gateway

Install the StrongDM gateway in your VPC or on-premises network. It's a single binary that runs on Linux, and can also be deployed as a Docker container or Kubernetes pod. No inbound firewall rules needed — the gateway makes outbound connections to the StrongDM control plane.

Step 3: Connect Your Identity Provider

Integrate StrongDM with your IdP (Okta, Azure AD, Google, etc.) via SAML or OIDC. This enables SSO and lets you define access policies based on existing groups and roles.

Step 4: Add Resources

Register your databases, servers, Kubernetes clusters, and cloud accounts in the StrongDM admin console. For each resource, provide connection details and credentials — StrongDM stores them securely and injects them at connection time.

Step 5: Define Roles & Policies

Create roles that map to your team structure (e.g., "Backend Engineers," "DBAs," "On-Call") and assign resource access per role. Configure JIT approval workflows for sensitive resources.

Step 6: Roll Out the Client

Have engineers install the StrongDM desktop client or CLI. They authenticate via SSO, see their available resources, and connect using their preferred tools. The experience is seamless — most engineers describe it as "it just works."

Step 7: Enable Session Recording & Alerts

Turn on session recording for production resources. Configure alerts for unusual access patterns (e.g., access outside business hours, bulk data queries). Export logs to your SIEM for correlation.

7. Pricing

StrongDM uses a per-user-per-month pricing model. Pricing is not publicly listed — you need to contact sales. However, third-party sources indicate pricing starts at approximately $50/user/month.^[9]

8. Pros & Cons

✅ Pros

• Excellent developer experience — Engineers can use their preferred SQL clients, SSH tools, and kubectl without learning new interfaces. StrongDM is invisible when it works well.^[10]
• Comprehensive protocol support — 100+ protocols from PostgreSQL to Kubernetes to RDP. One tool for all infrastructure access.
• Strong audit trail — Every session, query, and command is logged and replayable. Compliance teams love this.
• Just-in-Time access — Eliminates standing privileges, a major security improvement over traditional PAM.
• Agentless architecture — No agents needed on target resources. Deploy gateways in your network and you're done.
• Vault-agnostic — Works with your existing secret stores (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, CyberArk) rather than forcing migration.
• Praised customer support — G2 reviewers consistently highlight responsive, knowledgeable support.^[10]
• Fast deployment — Teams report going from trial to production in 1-2 weeks.

❌ Cons

• No free tier — No self-serve trial or freemium plan. You must go through sales, which adds friction for small teams wanting to experiment.
• Price per user — At ~$50/user/month, costs add up quickly for larger teams. Smaller startups may find it expensive.
• Sales-led go-to-market — Engineers who prefer to self-serve and evaluate tools independently will find the mandatory sales process frustrating.
• Cloud control plane dependency — The management layer is cloud-hosted (unless you're on GovCloud). Some security teams prefer fully self-hosted solutions.
• Learning curve for policy engine — The context-based policy system is powerful but complex. Getting policies right requires iteration and testing.
• Gartner reviews are mixed — While G2 reviews are strong, Gartner Peer Insights reviewers note the product is "average compared to other PAM products" and suggest improvements are needed.^[11]

9. Competitors