Topic starter
22/01/2026 4:49 pm
TL;DR: Enterprises often leave contractor, service account, and employee access active long after the original need has passed, creating standing privilege exposure and audit findings, according to Omada Identity. JIT reduces the exposure window, but identity governance is what proves access remains justified across changing business context.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Omada Identity: “Just-in-Time Access and Identity Governance: Understanding the Relationship”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when governance relies only on quarterly access reviews?
A: Quarterly reviews miss the day-to-day drift that accumulates between certification cycles.
Q: What is the difference between just-in-time access and identity governance?
A: Just-in-time access is a privilege delivery pattern that reduces how long elevated access exists.
Q: What are the signs that standing privilege is becoming an audit and security problem?
A: The clearest signals are orphaned accounts, permissions that survive role changes, service accounts left with administrative rights after a one-time project, and reviewers who cannot explain why access was originally granted.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every standing entitlement to a business justification Create an inventory of privileged and non-privileged access that records why each entitlement exists, who approved it, and when the business need ends.
- Move privileged elevation to time-bound workflows Use just-in-time access for administrative and break-glass use cases so elevated permissions are issued only for the maintenance window or incident window that requires them.
- Trigger entitlement checks from authoritative lifecycle events Connect access decisions to HR, project, and contract events so promotions, transfers, project closures, and leaver states immediately re-evaluate entitlements.
Bottom line: Standing privilege remains the core problem because access often outlives the business reason that created it.
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11/10/2026 10:31 am
Standing privilege is a governance failure, not just an access-control flaw. When contractor, employee, or service-account access remains active after the business need ends, the programme has lost the ability to explain why the entitlement still exists. That is why audit findings and breach exposure cluster around stale access, not merely around weak authentication. The practical conclusion is that entitlement justification must be treated as a live control state, not a historical record.
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 teams prioritise just-in-time access or broader identity governance first?
A: Teams should prioritise broader identity governance first when they lack reliable justification, approval, and lifecycle controls across the enterprise. JIT is strongest when the organisation can already determine who should have access, for how long, and under what business context. If that foundation is missing, temporary access only masks a governance problem rather than resolving it.
👉 Read our full editorial: Just-in-time access exposes the limits of standing privilege governance