Most organizations still deal with a lot of standing access. A user gets elevated access and we forget to revoke it, or someone switches roles and keeps their access from the old one. Our attack surface grows with each standing permission. Just-in-time access flips that default. You grant only what is needed, exactly when it is needed, and you remove it as soon as the work ends.

In this article I hope to give identity and security teams a practical path to make JIT access the standard operating model. We define JIT, show how it fits with RBAC and ABAC, explain where it works best, explore how agents change the picture, and outline how to build, roll out, and measure a program that improves both productivity and security.

What is JIT (Just-In-Time)?

Just-in-time access issues time-bound and scope-bound permissions on demand, then revokes them automatically. Think of it as least privilege with a clock and a clear scope. Unlike a standard access request, expiry is part of the grant. No one needs to remember to remove anything later.

JIT began as an emergency scenario, like when an admin needs elevated access quickly to resolve an urgent issue. Modern identity platforms and cloud controls now support it across a much wider set of tasks. JIT can be the default for any permission you do not use daily, including sensitive SaaS roles, database privileges, cloud consoles, CI pipelines, and internal admin functions.

How JIT Works With RBAC and ABAC

Role Based Access Control assigns access based on membership in a role. You define a role once and map it to entitlements. For example, everyone with the Marketing role gets HubSpot and Canva.

Attribute Based Access Control grants access when a policy evaluates to true across attributes of the user, resource, action, and environment. The policy defines who qualifies, not a static group. For example, grant HubSpot and Canva to users whose role is Marketing, employment type is FTE, location is US, and manager is John Smith.

Just in time adds duration and task. Keep the baseline role small. Use ABAC to narrow eligibility and conditions. When a task requires elevation, issue a short-lived entitlement tied to a specific action and resource. ABAC decides who qualifies under current conditions, and JIT limits how long and how broadly the grant applies. You can also use ABAC to block requests outright if the requester does not meet basic requirements like MFA or compliant device.

When is it Time for Just-In-Time?

JIT fits two patterns. The first is routine elevation on a predictable cadence. Consider quarter-close finance tasks, maintenance windows, or periodic schema changes. The second is ad hoc work where someone needs temporary rights to unblock an incident or enable a deployment.

Ownership matters in both cases. Requestors should not need to be security experts. Application and entitlement owners define what can be JIT-granted, under which conditions, and for how long. Security teams codify guardrails and step in for high-risk changes or separation of duties checks. Approvals start with the owner who understands the operation, with security engaged when risk or policy requires it.

A simple example illustrates the idea. A product manager occasionally needs admin rights in a support tool to add a contractor. Today that person might keep admin forever because it is convenient. With JIT, they request a task-scoped admin profile that expires in X minutes. The system records who, what, why, and for how long access was granted. The job gets done, and the background risk stays low.

Agents And Non-Human Identities

AI agents are now autonomous actors inside the enterprise. They make decisions, access systems, and execute tasks with little human oversight. That makes them identities in their own right, not just wrappers around service accounts or API keys. Treat them as first-class identities with owners, clear purposes, and explicit scopes.

Most teams cannot answer three basic questions today. Which agents are running in our environment. What systems can they access? What permissions do they actually hold? This visibility gap is the core risk as adoption accelerates.

Agents behave differently from traditional NHIs. A service account follows fixed logic. An agent interprets context, adapts, and tries alternate paths until it completes the task. It operates at high speed and at scale. If it inherits broad standing rights, the blast radius grows quickly.

The model that works looks a lot like how you govern people, with tighter controls and shorter windows. Start with an agent registry. Record owner, purpose, allowed tasks, baseline scopes, and last activity. Link each agent to the machine credentials it may use and to the data it can touch. Represent these relationships in your identity graph so every request is evaluated in context.

Just-in-time access is essential for agents. Give the agent only the permission it needs for the specific task and for a short period. Do not let it reuse a human sponsor’s standing rights. When the timer expires, revoke tokens, sessions, and keys.

• Round out the guardrails with a small set of practices that scale:

• Identity profiles that define purpose, baseline permissions, and ownership

• Human-in-the-loop approval for any elevation beyond the baseline

• Continuous monitoring for unused rights, anomalous behavior, or scope creep

• Automated remediation that revokes excess, suspends risky agents, and notifies owners

This approach keeps autonomy without losing control. You gain clear accountability, smaller blast radius, and audit-ready records for every decision. Most important, you align agent productivity with least privilege by default, not as an afterthought.

A JIT Architecture That Scales

JIT thrives when four layers work together and feed one another.

1) Visibility

Start with an accurate catalog of identities, entitlements, applications, resources, and owners. Include people, service accounts, workload identities, and agents. Map who can grant what. Assign ownership for every entitlement and admin function. Integrate data from your IGA, directories, cloud accounts, SaaS admins, and data platforms. Without this map you cannot know what you are granting or who should approve it.

2) Policy And Decision

Define who can request what, under which conditions, and for how long. Use ABAC to enforce basic security requirements. Link higher risk actions to change records. Tier approvals by risk (what gets auto-approved vs. what needs human review). 

3) Intelligence

Add context to each request. Does the request align with the requester's job title and team? Do other team members have this access? Does the user have a history of violations? Present recommendations that reduce cognitive load for approvers. The goal is not to replace judgment. It is to give the resource owner structured context so they can decide quickly and confidently.

4) Fulfillment And Audit

Provision at the smallest practical unit. Prefer ephemeral roles, short-lived tokens, and session policies rather than group adds. Revoke everything when the timer expires, including sessions and keys. Write a durable audit trail that captures requestor, approver, reason, scope, and duration. Index every grant so user access reviews become faster and more meaningful.

Rolling Out JIT

Start where the impact is highest. Choose a sensitive SaaS app and a production cloud account. Inventory admin actions, define owners, and mark which actions are JIT-eligible. Set short default durations and clear approval paths. Run a small pilot with people who understand the tasks and can provide actionable feedback.

Limit the audience at first. You can hide the JIT entry point from general users until owners and security are comfortable with the flow. As confidence grows, expand who can request JIT and add more actions and teams.

Make audit an explicit outcome. Every JIT grant should produce an easy to read record for compliance. This reduces manual effort during periodic reviews and gives auditors clear evidence of least privilege.

Guardrails For Agents

Agents need the same rigor as people, plus a few extras. Maintain a registry of agents with owner, purpose, allowed tasks, and data sensitivity. Use short-lived credentials with narrow scope. Avoid reusable keys and prefer brokered, time-bound tokens. Require human initiation for scope changes. Agents may request within their allow list but cannot extend it on their own. Build a kill switch that revokes all agent tokens at once. Connect it to anomaly detection so you can respond quickly without guesswork.

Measuring JIT Success

A focused set of metrics shows progress. Track the percent reduction in standing high-risk entitlements. Measure mean time to elevation and approval success rate. Watch median JIT session length and the share that end by auto revoke. Monitor reviewer load during access reviews and incidents linked to stale permissions.

The target state is clear. Elevation for legitimate work is fast. Background risk trends down. If both lines move in the right direction, your model is working.

Common Failure Modes And Fixes

Approval fatigue is the most common failure. Owners and security get overwhelmed by noisy requests. Reduce volume with clear task packs and strong defaults. Use recommendations so owners see a simple approve or deny with the right context.

Temporary group adds are another trap. Groups linger and create blind spots. Prefer ephemeral roles or policy attachments that expire automatically. When groups are unavoidable, require an expiry and verify revocation after the window closes.

Agent inheritance is a quiet risk. Do not let agents reuse human standing rights. Bind them to their own service principals and JIT policies.

How Linx Implements JIT

Linx treats identity as a security problem first. The platform builds a graph that unifies people, non-human identities, and agents across SaaS and cloud. Every request consults this graph in real time. Risk signals and peer comparisons help owners decide quickly. Policies blend RBAC, ABAC, task context, and separation of duties.

Provisioning is granular. The system attaches the smallest scope required for the task, issues short-lived credentials, and tears them down on expiry. The same flow works for human users, workload identities, and agents. Approvals start with the resource owner and escalate by risk, which keeps security focused on the reviews that matter most. Every action writes a complete audit trail so access reviews and certifications become faster and more accurate.

Customers tell us the difference is the security-first lens. The goal is not only faster approvals or cleaner audits. The goal is safe productivity. JIT captures that goal by cutting background risk while keeping teams moving.

Bringing It Together

Standing access is quiet exposure that grows over time. Just-in-time access turns the default inside out. You grant only what is needed, when it is needed, and you remove it on time. RBAC and ABAC still matter. JIT gives them a practical time dimension that matches how work happens. Agents raise the stakes, yet the same pattern works when you treat them as identities with owners, tasks, and short-lived scopes.

Ready to begin. Pick two high-risk applications. List the admin actions, set owners, and mark which actions are JIT-eligible. Wire short default durations, owner approvals, and step-up MFA for higher risk tasks. Track approvals, session lengths, and reductions in standing access for thirty days. You will see quickly where to expand next.

One last question for your team. If an agent or attacker inherited your current standing rights, what could they do in thirty minutes? If the answer worries you, JIT should be your new default.