Britive is a privileged access management company built around zero standing privileges. Instead of leaving admin rights in place, it creates privileged access for AI agents, non-human identities and people at the moment they need it, and removes it when the task is done, across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments.
It is aimed at cloud, platform and security teams whose admin roles, service account keys and agent permissions have grown faster than anyone can review them, and who want privilege to exist only while work is being done.
At A Glance
| Vendor | Britive |
|---|---|
| Category | Privileged Access Management |
| Identities covered | Human users, NHIs (service accounts, workloads, pipelines, CI/CD jobs), AI agents |
| Deployment | SaaS, with a proxyless connector for private cloud and on-premises |
| Agentic AI | Britive ARC (Agentic Runtime Control), Britive MCP Gateway |
| Customers | Forbes, Marqeta |
| Certifications | SOC 2 Type II, CSA STAR Level 1 |
| Market classification | Privileged Access Management; also Authorisation, NHI Platforms & Machine Identity |
What Britive Does
Standing privilege, permanent access that exists long before anyone uses it, is what attackers look for once they are inside. Britive’s answer is that “no privilege exists until it is requested and granted, and every one is removed when the task ends”. The same model applies whether the requester is an engineer, a build pipeline or an AI agent, and whether the target is a cloud account, a server or a database. The platform acts as a runtime control plane that authorises, enforces and records each privileged grant, so access reviews look at what was actually granted rather than at roles nobody remembers creating.
Products
Cloud Identity Security And Governance
Cloud teams often hand out broad, permanent roles because requesting access is slow. This core module replaces them with just-in-time, time-limited access to AWS, Azure, GCP and OCI. Access profiles carry approval policies for application resources, a policy-based access control framework decides who can request what, and each decision, grant, scope and expiry is recorded as it happens. Access Builder adds self-service request workflows, so users are not waiting on an administrator to set up each role by hand.
Universal Secrets Management
Pipelines and service accounts usually depend on long-lived credentials kept in a vault. With Universal Secrets Management, service accounts, workloads, pipelines and CI/CD jobs drop their permanent credentials and receive access only when a job runs, inside the CLI and tools they already use. Vaulted credentials are still supported for systems that need them, through a secrets store, and there are no vault servers, disaster recovery copies or rotation infrastructure for the customer to host.
PAM For Hybrid Environments
Servers and databases in private clouds and data centres need the same treatment as cloud roles. This module provisions just-in-time access to them through the Access Broker, a proxyless connector, and supports monitoring and recording of privileged sessions.
How It Works
Britive is delivered as SaaS, with nothing for the customer to host or patch. Enforcement happens natively at the resource, with no proxy sitting in the data path.
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| Access Broker | Private cloud and on-premises resources are reached through the Access Broker, a proxyless connector that provisions just-in-time access in those remote environments for the SaaS control plane. |
| Shared signals | Britive supports the OpenID Shared Signals Framework in both directions, receiving and emitting CAEP and RISC events, with every event and action written to the audit log. |
| Tooling | The PyBritive CLI, a Terraform provider for infrastructure as code and APIs let teams request access and manage policy from their own tools and pipelines. |
Identities And Systems Covered
| Human users | Developers, administrators and other staff requesting just-in-time privileged access |
|---|---|
| Non-human identities | Service accounts, workloads and build pipelines, including CI/CD jobs |
| AI agents | Discovered and governed as identities with a human owner, policies and a lifecycle |
| Cloud platforms | Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure |
| Other systems | Kubernetes, SaaS applications, databases and servers |
Agentic AI Capabilities
Britive ARC
AI agents act quickly and on their own, so permissions granted in advance are a poor fit. Britive ARC (Agentic Runtime Control) runs one model for every agent action: “verify, assess, authorize, observe, revoke”. Each action is decided as it happens, and the default answer is deny. Control reaches into sessions and individual commands, so a wrong command can be stopped before it touches a resource. Access ends when the task ends, when a time limit runs out or when a signal revokes it. The record kept for each action includes the prompt, the stated intent, the identities involved, the decision and the outcome.
Britive MCP Gateway
Agents that work through the Model Context Protocol pass through the MCP Gateway, which enforces ARC decisions at every tool call.
Company Background
| Leadership | Art Poghosyan, Co-Founder and CEO; Alex Gudanis, Co-Founder and CTO; Patrick Welch, CRO |
|---|---|
| Scale | More than 3.5 million reported identities managed |
| Funding | $20.5M Series B (2023) led by Pelion Venture Partners, with Liberty Global Ventures, Crosslink Capital and One Way Ventures |
Note: This overview is compiled from Britive’s publicly available information as of 3 November 2026. It is provided for information only. NHI Mgmt Group does not endorse any vendor, and nothing on this page represents the opinions of NHI Mgmt Group.