Topic starter
14/08/2026 6:37 pm
TL;DR: Standing privilege is the default in most enterprise identity environments, and JIT access shifts permissions to time-bound, task-scoped grants that are automatically revoked, according to Oleria Security and Verizon’s 2025 DBIR. That matters because dormant access, over-permissioned roles, and delayed offboarding still drive excessive blast radius across human and non-human identities.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Oleria Security: “Just-in-time access: how to eliminate standing privileges and reduce risk”.
By the numbers:
- The average breach cost reached $4.4 million, according to IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report cited by Oleria Security.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when just-in-time access is used as a substitute for real privilege reduction?
A: What breaks is the assumption that a time limit equals a security boundary.
Q: Why does identity drift create risk in both human and non-human identity estates?
A: Identity drift creates risk in both estates because access often persists after the original business need changes.
Q: How do security teams know whether just-in-time credential access is actually reducing risk?
A: Just-in-time access is working when privileged credentials are short-lived, task-scoped, and automatically retired after use.
Practitioner guidance
- Map persistent privilege by actual usage Identify the human and non-human accounts with broad access that are rarely exercised, then rank them by exposure and business criticality.
- Move privileged elevation into time-bound workflows Use policy-driven request, approval, provisioning, and automatic revocation for administrative access.
- Apply JIT to service accounts and tokens Review workload credentials, API tokens, and bot identities for permissions that outlast the job they support.
Bottom line: Standing privilege is the core problem because it keeps access live after the business need has faded.
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14/08/2026 6:44 pm
Standing privilege is a governance assumption, not just a configuration choice. Most identity programmes still presume that access can remain live until periodic review, because the underlying operating model is built around persistent grants. That assumption breaks down once access is treated as a temporary execution right rather than a durable attribute. The practitioner consequence is that entitlement design, not review cadence, becomes the decisive control boundary.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 91% of organisations say at least half of their privileged access is always-on, and only 1% have fully implemented just-in-time privileged access, according to a CyberArk study.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations use just-in-time access for contractors and vendors?
A: Yes, but only if the same approval discipline applies to third-party access as to employees. Contractors and vendors often create the largest privilege exceptions because their access is intermittent, high impact, and poorly recertified. JIT helps most when it is paired with strict lifecycle offboarding and resource-specific entitlements.
👉 Read our full editorial: Just-in-time access reduces standing privilege exposure in enterprise IAM