Least privilege ensures users and systems have only the minimum access required to perform their tasks. Privileged credential abuse is a major factor in security breaches, with privilege escalation being a common attack vector. Attackers often start with low-level access and exploit software vulnerabilities or misconfigurations to gain administrator privileges, especially when accounts have excessive or unnecessary rights. Another overlooked risk is standing privileges — continuously available privileged access that expands the attack surface. Just-in-time privileged access management (JIT PAM) mitigates this by granting access only when needed and revoking it immediately after, minimizing exposure. A true least-privilege security model ensures that users, applications and systems have only the necessary rights for the shortest required duration — a critical requirement for compliance and regulatory security. Our teams have implemented this through an automated workflow that triggers a lightweight approval process, assigns temporary roles with restricted access and enforces time to live (TTL) for each role, ensuring privileges expire automatically once the task is completed.
