They should implement both, but the priority order depends on the current exposure. If remote access and stolen credentials are the main path in, MFA should be immediate. If privileged accounts are already broadly reusable, zero standing privilege may reduce risk faster because it removes the access attackers want after they authenticate.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
MFA and zero standing privilege solve different parts of the same access problem. MFA reduces the value of stolen credentials at the point of authentication, while zero standing privilege reduces what those credentials can do after login. If privileged access is left permanently available, an attacker who clears MFA once can still move quickly through high-impact systems. NHI Management Group notes that 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, which makes standing access a persistent weakness rather than a theoretical one.
The right first move depends on the current attack path. Where remote access, phishing, or credential reuse are the dominant risks, MFA usually delivers the fastest reduction in exposure. Where privileged accounts already have broad, reusable access, ZSP can remove more practical risk because it collapses the attacker’s window of opportunity. That distinction is central in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Key Challenges and Risks and is consistent with the direction of the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10. In practice, many security teams discover that the more urgent gap is not authentication strength, but how much access remains usable after authentication succeeds.
How It Works in Practice
A practical prioritisation starts with threat path analysis. If users or operators are authenticating from unmanaged endpoints, over the internet, or through reused passwords, MFA should be deployed first because it reduces account takeover risk immediately. If the environment already has MFA but privileged roles still persist all day, the next step is ZSP with just-in-time elevation, session scoping, and automatic revocation when the task ends. For NHI and privileged automation, this means no standing secrets, no permanent admin tokens, and no reusable access that outlives the approved task.
Current guidance suggests treating MFA as an authentication control and ZSP as an authorisation control. They should not be collapsed into one programme. MFA answers, “Is this entity who it claims to be?” ZSP answers, “Should it still have this privilege right now?” That distinction matters because attackers often use one valid login to reach multiple systems if standing access is broad. The OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and the Microsoft Midnight Blizzard breach both reinforce the operational danger of reusable access paths and weak identity hygiene.
- Deploy MFA first where remote access, VPN, email, or admin portals are exposed to phishing or stolen credentials.
- Use ZSP first where privileged roles are persistent, shared, or broadly reusable across production systems.
- Measure success by attack-path reduction, not checkbox coverage.
- For NHIs, prefer short-lived credentials and task-scoped elevation over permanent API keys.
These controls tend to break down in legacy environments with shared admin accounts, hardcoded secrets, or systems that cannot support per-session elevation because access becomes either too brittle or too broad.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter access controls often increase operational friction, so teams need to balance security gain against outage risk and support burden. In mature environments, that tradeoff is manageable. In heavily integrated estates, however, the sequence matters more than the slogan. There is no universal standard for this yet, but current practice is to prioritise the control that closes the most realistic attack path first, then layer the second control where it meaningfully reduces residual risk.
One common edge case is service and automation access. MFA is often irrelevant to machine-to-machine workflows, while ZSP can materially reduce blast radius if credentials are ephemeral and scoped correctly. Another edge case is third-party access: MFA may help for vendor logins, but if vendor accounts retain standing privilege, the real exposure remains. In those environments, the most effective path is usually a combination of MFA for interactive entry, ZSP for privilege use, and strong lifecycle discipline for secrets and approvals. The NHI Mgmt Group guide shows that only 20% of organisations have formal offboarding and revocation processes for API keys, which is why standing access often persists long after a task should have ended. Best practice is evolving, but the rule remains simple: authenticate strongly, then remove privilege as soon as it is no longer needed.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-03 | Addresses excessive and persistent NHI privilege, central to ZSP prioritisation. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-4 | Supports least-privilege access decisions after authentication succeeds. |
| NIST AI RMF | Helps teams govern risk-based access choices for autonomous and adaptive systems. |
Enforce least privilege and review whether access should exist continuously or only during approved tasks.
