Topic starter
22/06/2026 3:14 pm
TL;DR: Traditional PAM and credential rotation were built for segmented, mostly on-prem environments, but identity now spans remote workers, machine identities, and third-party access, according to Whiteswan Security. The governance gap is no longer just privileged accounts, it is whether endpoints, access paths, and servers are being controlled as one identity problem.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Whiteswan Security: “Modern Identity & Access Security”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when zero standing privilege is only partly implemented?
A: When ZSP is partial, organisations keep the appearance of least privilege while preserving standing access through roles, exceptions, vendor paths, or manual workarounds.
Q: Why do over-provisioned VPNs increase privileged access risk?
A: Over-provisioned VPNs widen the identity path into backend systems, which lets a stolen credential or compromised device reach more resources than the task requires.
Q: How do teams know whether zero standing privilege is actually working?
A: Teams should look for evidence that privileged access is time-bound, fully revoked, and impossible to reuse outside the approved session.
Practitioner guidance
- Map the full privileged access path Inventory how users, devices, VPNs, and servers currently combine to grant privileged access, then identify where standing access still exists across those layers.
- Bind access to device trust and session context Require device posture and application context to be evaluated before privileged access is granted, so the session cannot outlive the conditions that justified it.
- Replace standing privilege with task-scoped grants Use just-in-time privilege for administrative tasks, with expiry tied to the work being performed rather than to a static role assignment.
Bottom line: The article argues that legacy PAM models do not fit today’s distributed identity paths, especially where endpoints and access channels can carry privilege into backend systems.
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22/06/2026 3:17 pm
Zero standing privilege for infrastructure is now an access-path problem, not a vault problem. The old PAM model assumes the privileged account is the main unit of control. That assumption fails when endpoints, VPNs, and servers all participate in the same access decision. Practitioners need to treat the access path itself as the governable object, because that is where standing privilege now survives.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 90% of IT leaders say properly managing NHIs is essential for a successful zero-trust implementation, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between Zero Standing Privilege and traditional PAM?
A: Zero Standing Privilege removes persistent administrative access and replaces it with on-demand privilege, while traditional PAM often focuses on controlling how credentials are checked out or stored. ZSP is an operating model, not just a vaulting control, and it is better suited to environments that need tighter blast-radius reduction.
👉 Read our full editorial: Zero standing privilege for apps and infrastructure needs a new stack