Implementing Zero Standing Privilege in Keycloak

The admin account no longer exists. The dashboard is blank, and nothing lives with permanent rights. Keycloak now works without standing privileges. Every permission is temporary, granted when needed, gone when done.

Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) is the next step in identity management security. It eliminates long-lived admin rights that attackers exploit. In Keycloak, ZSP means no tokens, roles, or credentials remain active beyond the task that requires them. The system returns to a baseline state with no privileged session waiting to be misused.

Traditional deployments give superuser accounts to a few trusted operators. Those accounts stay alive. Even if unused, they become a target. A single leak or misconfiguration can expose everything. With ZSP, privileged access is not a constant state. It’s an event with a short lifespan that is strictly controlled.

Implementing Keycloak Zero Standing Privilege starts with removing all default admin roles. Privileged functions happen through just-in-time access. These are created automatically for specific workflows, bound by time limits, and revoked once complete. Rights are logged, audited, and impossible to reuse outside the defined window.

Core steps for deploying ZSP in Keycloak:

1. Disable permanent admin accounts.
2. Integrate with an access broker or orchestration tool to issue just-in-time permissions.
3. Configure strict token expiration and enforce short lifetimes for elevated roles.
4. Monitor and audit every privileged action with immutable logs.
5. Use automation to trigger rights creation and removal tied to functional events.

Security improves because attackers can’t linger in privileged space. Compliance strengthens because every elevation is documented. Operations gain resilience because the system can’t be hijacked through dormant admin credentials.

Keycloak’s flexible architecture makes ZSP adoption straightforward. Service accounts, roles, and policies can be managed through its API, enabling external tooling to control privilege workflows. Combined with multi-factor authentication for elevation requests, every privileged session is intentional, traceable, and temporary.

Run Keycloak without permanent standing privileges. Cut off the static attack surface. Make access ephemeral by design. See it in action and deploy Zero Standing Privilege with hoop.dev — live in minutes.