Yeah. Really.
If you followed The PAM Insider through the end of 2025, you may have noticed something missing. A fourteen-episode video series I had put together — a body of work I was genuinely proud of — got taken down. I was asked to remove it, and I did.
I am not going to spend a lot of words on that part. It happened. I made the call. We moved on.
What I will tell you is that it forced a conversation I probably needed to have with myself anyway. What exactly is The PAM Insider trying to be? Who is it for? Is the YouTube channel the right vehicle? Should this be a blog? Should it be something completely different?
I sat with those questions for a while. The answer I kept coming back to was: all of it.
The YouTube channel stays. Video is a legitimate way to reach people who learn that way and I am not walking away from it because of one difficult moment. New content is coming.
The blog — which you are reading right now — is new. The PAM Field Notes section of this site is where I am going to put the writing. Some of it will be technical. Practical breakdowns of PAM concepts, attack patterns, and controls for practitioners who want straight answers without the vendor pitch. Some of it will be this: honest, unfiltered perspective on the industry, the work, and whatever else is worth saying out loud.
And then there are the apps.
The PAM Field Guide is live on both Android and iOS as of May 2026. It is a free, offline-first mobile reference for PAM concepts, controls, risks, and real-world scenarios. No login. No tracking. No internet required. Everything on your device. It is the reference tool I always wanted to have in my pocket when I was in the field.
Phantom Privilege is in active development. It is a cybersecurity educational experience — not a game, not a course, not a certification — where you run a corporate security program under active attack. You build your stack, you make decisions under pressure, and you find out what it costs to get PAM wrong. One in seven sessions is unwinnable by design. There is a reason for that, and if you play it you will understand why.
And there is a third thing taking shape: a PAM Compliance Mapper. Not a mobile app — a web-based tool. The idea is straightforward — take the PAM controls your organization actually has in place and map them against the compliance frameworks that matter to your business. NIST, CIS Controls, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, CMMC, cyber insurance requirements — the ones auditors ask about and the ones underwriters are increasingly asking about too. Answer a set of practical questions about your environment and walk away with a clear picture of where you stand and where the gaps are. No consultant required. No vendor agenda. Just an honest readout. Still in early thinking but the need is real and I hear it consistently from practitioners who are being pulled into compliance conversations they do not feel equipped for.
The PAM Insider llc is now a real company, registered in Oregon. That matters to me. This is not a side project or a content experiment. It is a brand built around a genuine belief that PAM education should be vendor-neutral, practically useful, and accessible to the people who actually do this work — not just the people who budget for it.
The series getting taken down was a setback. The relaunch is the answer to it.
We are just getting started.
If you have thoughts, feedback, or just want to connect — thepaminsider@gmail.com. Always happy to hear from practitioners in the field.