IT Glossary
Just-in-time access grants elevated rights only when needed, then revokes them. Learn how JIT access works and how it differs from JIT provisioning.
August 7, 2026
Just-in-time access (JIT access) is a security practice in which elevated permissions are granted only for the moment they are needed and revoked automatically once that moment passes. Instead of holding standing admin rights, a user requests access, receives it for a defined window, and loses it when the window closes. It is the operational form of the principle of least privilege.
The two terms are frequently confused. Just-in-time provisioning creates a user account in an application the first time someone signs in through single sign-on. Just-in-time access temporarily raises the rights of an account that already exists. One solves onboarding, the other solves standing privilege.
An infrastructure engineer needs production database access to investigate an incident. Rather than sitting permanently in an admin group, he requests four hours through a workflow, his team lead approves it in Slack, and the grant expires on its own at 18:00. The audit file shows the reason, the approver, and the exact window. Corma runs that request, approval, and revocation loop across SaaS applications, so elevation stops being a ticket nobody remembers to close.
Privileged access management is the broader discipline covering vaulting, session recording, and credential rotation. JIT access is one control within it: time-bounded elevation instead of standing rights.
Long enough to finish the task and no longer. Four to eight hours suits most operational work, while a one-hour window fits sensitive production changes.
Only when every request needs a manual approval. Policy-based auto-approval for low-risk cases keeps the friction where the risk actually sits.
Yes. It produces a dated record of who asked for what, who approved it, and when it ended, which is precisely the evidence access reviews and ISO 27001 audits ask for.
