Building a Just-In-Time Access Proof of Concept to Eliminate Standing Privileges
The dashboard glowed red. Too many accounts had permissions they didn’t need. Attackers love this moment. Your job is to close the gap before they find a way in.
A Just-In-Time Access Proof of Concept (JIT Access POC) is the fastest way to prove you can eliminate standing privileges without breaking workflows. It shows, in a controlled environment, how users can request and gain access only when they need it, for a set period, and then lose it automatically. No more permanent keys to critical systems.
The proof of concept starts with identifying target systems and roles. Focus on high-risk accounts: admin consoles, production databases, CI/CD pipelines, and sensitive API endpoints. Map current access rights and remove anything that’s not essential. Set up an access broker that integrates with your identity provider. Define expiry rules for each role, usually minutes or hours, not days. Log every request, approval, and revocation.
Security teams use a JIT Access Proof of Concept to measure three things:
- Risk reduction — How many privileged accounts can be set to zero standing access?
- Operational impact — Does the process slow down deployments or incident response?
- Audit readiness — Can you prove, with logs, who had access, why, and for how long?
Common pitfalls include granting blanket JIT access without role segmentation, ignoring service accounts, and failing to secure the access request workflow. A strong POC mitigates these with fine-grained roles, automated expiry, and MFA at every request.
Once proven, JIT access can move to production with phased rollout. Start with a single high-value system, then expand across the environment. Automation is key. Manual approval processes don’t scale and invite human error.
The result is a security posture where privileges exist only when absolutely required. Threat windows shrink. Insider risk drops. Your team still ships on time.
You can build this in weeks, or see it running in minutes. Visit hoop.dev to spin up a live Just-In-Time Access Proof of Concept and watch it lock down your environment in real time.