Just-in-Time Access Isn’t What Most People Think It Is 

Why “ephemeral authorization” is the difference between managing privilege and actually reducing risk. 

Just-in-Time (JIT) access has become one of the most commonly used terms in privileged access management. It shows up in RFPs, analyst reports, and nearly every vendor pitch. 

But despite how often it’s used, JIT is still widely misunderstood. 

Ask ten security or IAM leaders what JIT means, and you’ll likely hear answers that range from “access expires automatically” to “we require approvals before admin access” or even to something as simple as “we use a vault.” 

All of these “JIT” approaches introduce controls, but very few of them actually eliminate standing privileges. 

And that distinction matters more now than ever. 

As cloud environments scale, non-human identities multiply, and automation and AI systems act continuously, the difference between time-bound access and truly ephemeral authorization is the difference between effectively managing risk and just carrying it forward in quieter ways. 

This post breaks down what JIT was meant to solve, how it’s commonly implemented today, and why true JIT is fundamentally an authorization lifecycle decision, not just a feature checkbox. 

What JIT Was Originally Trying to Solve 

The original problem JIT set out to address was simple: privileged access shouldn’t exist unless it’s actively being used. 

For decades, privileged access models assumed permanence. Users got admin roles assigned to them “just in case,” or for a specific project, and these pre-provisioned credentials lived and existed indefinitely, even after the project or need ended because deprovisioning was a manual processes that wouldn’t even begin unless someone thought to audit and review user access. Permissions often accumulated faster than they were reviewed, leaving the attack surface to grow unchecked until access review time. 

JIT emerged as a way to shrink the attack surface by limiting when privileged access was available. 

But over time, JIT became layered onto legacy architectures like vaults, static roles, session-based access without changing the underlying model. The result is what we see today: JIT in name, standing privilege in practice. 

How JIT Is Commonly Understood Today (and Why That’s a Problem) 

Most JIT implementations today fall into one of these patterns: 

Time-limited roles 
Permissions exist on the resource but expire after a set duration. 

Vaulted credential access 
Users don’t know the password and can’t log in anymore, but the credential still exists and remains privileged. 

Approval-driven access windows 
Access is gated by tickets or workflows, then removed later. 

These approaches are often described as “good enough JIT” because they reduce visibility or duration. But they share a common approach and flaw: they focus on limiting a user’s ability to access permissions. But the permissions exist before they’re needed and may continue to exist on the target system after it’s used. 

This isn’t just a semantic issue, but a security one. 

Time limits reduce how long access can be used. They do not change whether access exists when nothing is happening. And that’s when attackers, compromised credentials, or misconfigurations come into play. 

What True Just-in-Time Access Actually Means 

At its core, JIT isn’t about strictly timing logins or approvals. It’s about managing and securing the authorization lifecycle. 

A true JIT model has three defining properties: 

1. The default state is no privileged access 
   Permissions are not automatically attached to an identity just because it exists in the target environment or resource. 
2. Authorization is created at the moment of need 
   Access is evaluated using real-time context, such as the requesting identity type, resource, environment, and relative risk of the action. 
3. Authorization is removed automatically 
   Permissions are deleted from the account completely when the task completes or expires, eliminating standing access. 

In this model, no permissions sit dormant. There’s nothing sitting behind a vault or a proxy. And there’s nothing that exists on the system “just in case.” 

If there’s no task being performed, there’s nothing to exploit. 

This is what makes JIT permissions truly ephemeral, and why it’s tightly associated to operationalizing Zero Standing Privileges. 

Connecting JIT, Zero Standing Privileges, and Least Privileged Access 

These three concepts are often discussed together, but they’re frequently implemented independently. 

The principle of least privilege defines the scope of permissions. An identity should have only the permissions required for a given task. These can be managed by access profiles that dictate what an identity can do when they check access out. 

Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) defines the persistence of permissions. In an ideal scenario, privileged access doesn't exist when it's not actively being used. 

JIT defines the mechanism that dictates how and when permissions are created and destroyed. 

Access requests are evaluated against policies at runtime. Permissions are minted and access is granted, and then revoked, all automatically. 

Without automated and ephemeral JIT permissions, ZSP is an operational aspiration. Without ZSP, least privilege becomes static and brittle as new requests pile up and permissions accumulate. 

True JIT is the operational layer that makes both principles enforceable in real environments, especially ones increasingly driven by automations and APIs. 

Why Cloud and Automation Has Exposed the Cracks 

Legacy PAM models were designed for human users, long-lived sessions, and centralized infrastructure. 

Modern environments look nothing like that. 

Today, non-human identities and AI agents vastly outnumber human identities. CI/CD pipelines and other automated processes request access constantly. Infrastructure changes faster than access reviews can keep up with. Evolving AI agents and autonomous systems operate continuously across environments, rendering manual approvals and point-in-time reviews are both slow and insecure. 

Any JIT model that treats non-human identities as exceptions will eventually fall back into depending on static credentials and recreate the very risks it was meant to solve. 

True JIT must apply equally to humans, automation, and emerging agentic systems. 

JIT as an Architectural Choice, Not Just a Feature 

Teams can’t think of “JIT” as another checkbox feature of their PAM program. Evaluating the mechanism used for JIT is key to understanding whether it achieves true Zero Standing Privileges. 

When evaluating a platform that claims to implement JIT, here are a few questions that can help you dig deeper and to find an approach that meets both your business and security requirements: 

• Are permissions tied to specific credentials? 
• What happens to permissions when they’re not actively being used? 
• How are access requests, approvals, and actions tracked? 
• Are access requests evaluated against security policy in real time? 
• Are logs maintained for each authorization event? What details are attached to these requests? 

As the focus around identity as the control plane continues to grow, the gap between managing privileged access and eliminating standing access will continue to widen. 

True JIT changes the model. When authorization is created only at execution time and removed automatically when the task is done, access becomes something that’s enforced by design, not reviewed after the fact. Security teams gain clarity into what’s exposed. Engineering teams get access that matches how modern systems operate.