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25/06/2026 12:23 am
TL;DR: Just-in-time access narrows privilege windows for people, machines, APIs, and AI models by granting access only when needed and revoking it afterward, according to Delinea. That reduces exposure, but it also exposes the governance burden of policy design, approval logic, and auditability across mixed identity types.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Delinea: Just-in-time access: Strengthening security in a zero-trust world
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams implement JIT access across human and machine identities?
A: Security teams should separate human request workflows from workload identity controls and treat service accounts, API keys, and AI systems as different actors.
Q: Why does JIT access fail when privilege is still effectively standing?
A: JIT fails when a temporary grant does not fully disappear from downstream systems, cached sessions, or inherited roles.
Q: How do organisations know if zero standing privilege is actually working?
A: They know it is working when access cannot be reused outside the intended task window and revocation is provable across every system that accepted the privilege.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every privileged path to a revocation checkpoint Document where elevated access is created, where it is consumed, and which systems must confirm that revocation actually propagated.
- Separate human and machine JIT workflows Do not force service accounts, API tokens, and AI workloads through the same request-and-approval pattern used for people.
- Validate zero standing privilege with session-level testing Run test cases that confirm access disappears before the next task can begin, not just after a nominal expiry timer.
What's in the full article
Delinea's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A step-by-step explanation of how its JIT workflow grants and revokes access for different identity types.
- The specific approval and automation logic the vendor describes for time-bound privilege windows.
- Examples of how the vendor positions JIT across cloud, remote work, and automation use cases.
- The webinar and product context that sit behind the blog's broader access-control framing.
👉 Read Delinea's blog post on just-in-time access and zero standing privilege →
JIT access in zero trust: are your controls keeping up?
Explore further
25/06/2026 9:18 am
JIT access is a privilege lifecycle control, not a substitute for governance. The control only works when approval, provisioning, revocation, and audit all align across the full access path. Many programmes adopt JIT as if the timer itself creates security, but the real issue is whether the entitlement disappears everywhere it matters. Practitioners should treat JIT as one control in a larger identity governance chain, not as an endpoint.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 88.5% of organisations acknowledge that their non-human IAM practices lag behind or are merely on par with their human identity and access management efforts, according to The 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report.
- 59.8% of organisations see value in a solution that simplifies non-human access management and introduces dynamic ephemeral credentials.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between JIT access and zero trust in practice?
A: JIT is a time-bound privilege pattern, while zero trust is a broader model of continuous verification. JIT can support zero trust, but it is not enough on its own if access is still granted once and then left unchallenged for the rest of the session.
👉 Read our full editorial: Just-in-time access and the limits of zero standing privilege
