Co-Management involves sharing the responsibility for the configuration, management and operation of a particular device or offering.

I first started using the term in 2002 to talk about firewall management. Co-Management represents a hybrid between a managed service (where the service provider provides all of the functions defined above) and an internal solution (where no service provider is involved).

The term has been used over the past 10 years in a number of contexts, but most recently to describe Co-Managed Privileged Password Service. Privileged Password Management relates to the lifecycle of privileged account passwords, like Administrator on Windows or root on Unix.