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20/08/2026 11:37 am
TL;DR: Vault-based PAM still leaves most privilege standing because it secures only what is manually onboarded, and even JIT wrappers often time-limit access without removing underlying permissions, according to Venice.io. Zero standing privilege now depends on continuous discovery, contextual access decisions, and ephemeral privilege issuance, not on vault checkout workflows alone.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Venice.io: All Blogs Zero Standing Privileges Vaults Won’t Get Us to Zero Standing Privilege
By the numbers:
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when credential vaulting is used as a substitute for zero standing privilege?
A: Vaulting can protect a secret while it is stored, but it does not remove the secret or the privilege behind it.
Q: Why do privileged access programmes still leave risk behind after rotation?
A: Rotation changes the secret, but it does not automatically change the access model.
Q: How can security teams tell whether JIT access is really removing privilege?
A: Check whether the workflow provisions permissions only for the task and removes them when the task ends.
Practitioner guidance
- Map vault coverage to live entitlement state Build an inventory that links each vaulted credential to the permissions, roles, and group memberships that remain active behind it.
- Separate credential protection from privilege removal Treat checkout, rotation, and approval workflows as control layers around a secret, not as proof that privilege has been removed.
- Eliminate standing access for long-lived service accounts Prioritise service accounts, migration roles, and legacy application credentials that cannot be safely rotated or constrained through the current vault model.
What's in the full article
Venice.io's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The vendor's practical architecture for continuous discovery across privileged accounts, cloud roles, and machine identities
- The access workflow details behind contextual access decisions and ephemeral privilege issuance
- Implementation examples for replacing vault checkout with task-scoped privilege controls
- The RSAC 2026 meeting context and product framing that sit outside this independent analysis
👉 Read Venice.io's analysis of why vaults do not deliver zero standing privilege →
Zero standing privilege and vaults: why the governance gap persists?
Explore further
20/08/2026 11:37 am
Vault-based PAM creates the illusion of control without eliminating standing privilege. The vault protects the credential, but the entitlement behind it often stays active, which means the security model changes less than the dashboard suggests. That is why organisations can rotate secrets, pass audits, and still retain broad unbounded access in production. Practitioners should treat vault coverage as evidence of storage control, not proof of privilege removal.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 88% of security professionals are concerned about secrets sprawl, with 49% of those in larger organisations described as "very concerned", according to The 2024 State of Secrets Management Survey.
- Only 44% of organisations are currently using a dedicated secrets management system, which helps explain why vault-centric control models still leave gaps.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should IAM and PAM teams respond when legacy applications cannot rotate secrets automatically?
A: They should treat those applications as high-risk privileged exceptions and move them into a tighter lifecycle process. That means continuous inventory, explicit ownership, narrower access scope, and a plan to replace static secrets with task-scoped identity patterns where possible. If rotation is impossible, the control must shift to containment and visibility.
👉 Read our full editorial: Vaults do not deliver zero standing privilege in modern enterprises
