Contractor cloud access
that expires.
Automatically.
Give contractors and vendors temporary, audited access to AWS, Azure, GCP, VMs, databases, and Kubernetes — without creating permanent IAM users or sharing SSH keys. Access is approved with a defined scope and TTL. When the session ends, credentials disappear. No cleanup required.
The contractor access problem
no one talks about.
You give a contractor access to fix a problem. Three months later they're gone — but the IAM user isn't. This is how breaches start. And it's completely avoidable.
Permanent IAM users never get cleaned up
You create an IAM user for a contractor, hand over a key pair, and move on. The project ends. The IAM user stays — forever — with console or API access to your production AWS account. Every ex-contractor is a latent breach waiting to be discovered.
Shared SSH keys are impossible to audit
When a VM has a single authorized_keys entry shared across five contractors, you cannot tell who did what in a session log. You can't revoke one contractor without re-keying for all of them. Incident response becomes guesswork.
Contractors bypass SSO and MFA
Your employees use SSO. Contractors get a static IAM key or a shared bastion account. That means third-party access travels outside your identity perimeter — no MFA enforcement, no session recording, no context for your SIEM.
Request → Approve → Access → Expire.
The entire contractor access lifecycle — from self-service request to automatic credential teardown — in four steps. No tickets, no manual IAM cleanup, no shared keys.
Contractor requests access via self-service portal
The contractor opens the Cloudanix access portal and selects what they need: cloud account, resource type, permission level, and a reason. No email threads. No Slack pings. The request is captured, timestamped, and routed to the right approver.
Manager approves with scope and TTL
The approver reviews the request, sets the exact permission boundary (read-only, specific S3 bucket, single RDS instance), and defines a time-to-live — from 1 hour to 30 days. Approval is one click, with the full scope locked in writing.
Cloudanix provisions short-lived credentials — no IAM user created
Cloudanix generates a time-boxed federated session or short-lived token scoped exactly to the approved permissions. No IAM user is created. No SSH key is added to authorized_keys. The contractor gets a one-time console link or credential bundle.
Session auto-revokes when TTL expires
When the TTL hits zero, the session terminates. The credentials are cryptographically invalidated. The full session — every API call, every command, every file touched — is sealed into the immutable audit log. Nothing to clean up.
Every surface contractors need.
Nothing they don't.
Cloudanix JIT covers every access pattern a contractor might need — console, CLI, VM, database, or Kubernetes — all through the same approval workflow and audit trail.
AWS Console
Federated sign-in via short-lived STS token. No IAM user, no access key. TTL-bound console session with full CloudTrail audit.
Azure Portal
Time-boxed role assignment via Privileged Identity Management. Contractor gets Azure RBAC for the approved scope only — auto-removed on expiry.
GCP Console
Just-in-time IAM binding on the target GCP project or resource. Binding is deleted on TTL expiry. No standing permissions.
VM SSH / RDP (no SSH keys)
Replace shared authorized_keys with per-session certificate-based SSH or time-limited RDP tokens. Session is recorded end-to-end via SSM or native proxy.
Database JIT
One-time database credentials scoped to a single schema or role. No shared postgres/root passwords. Full query log captured for the session duration.
Kubernetes kubectl
Short-lived kubeconfig with namespace-scoped RBAC. Contractor gets kubectl access to the approved namespace only — revoked when TTL expires.
Common questions about
contractor cloud access.
How can I give contractors temporary access to AWS without creating permanent IAM users?
Cloudanix issues a time-boxed AWS STS federated session for each contractor access request. The contractor authenticates through the Cloudanix portal — using their existing corporate identity or verified account — and receives a short-lived console sign-in URL or CLI credential bundle. No IAM user is created at any point. The STS session inherits only the IAM role permissions you approved in the request flow, and it expires automatically at the TTL you set (minutes, hours, or days). When the session ends, there is nothing to clean up because nothing persistent was ever created.
What's the best way to give third-party vendors audited access to production cloud accounts?
The best approach is a JIT access workflow where every third-party session is tied to an approved request with a defined scope and TTL. With Cloudanix, a vendor opens a self-service request specifying which cloud account, which resource, and what permission level they need. Your team approves (or auto-approves against a policy). Cloudanix provisions the scoped session and captures every action — API calls in AWS CloudTrail, commands in SSH sessions, queries in database sessions — in an immutable audit log. The log includes who requested access, who approved it, when it was active, and exactly what was done. This gives you a complete, reviewable record for compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA) without asking your security team to review static IAM policies.
How do I replace SSH keys for contractor VM access?
Cloudanix replaces static SSH keys with per-session certificate-based access. When a contractor's VM access request is approved, Cloudanix generates a short-lived SSH certificate signed by a session-specific CA. The certificate is valid only for the approved TTL and is scoped to the specific instance. The VM trusts certificates from the Cloudanix session CA (a one-time configuration change — no ongoing key management). When the TTL expires, the certificate is no longer valid and no key material remains on the contractor's machine. For Windows VMs, the same flow works via time-limited RDP token provisioning. AWS SSM Session Manager is also supported as a keyless alternative for AWS-hosted instances.
How does Cloudanix audit contractor sessions in AWS and Azure?
For AWS, Cloudanix enriches native CloudTrail events with the request context — contractor identity, approver, TTL, and scope — so every API call in CloudTrail is attributable to a named individual, not an anonymous IAM role assumption. For Azure, Cloudanix captures the PIM activation event plus Azure Activity Log events for the session window. For SSH and database sessions, Cloudanix routes connections through its session proxy, recording the full session: every command, every query, every file transferred. Audit records are immutable, searchable, and exportable to your SIEM. They are retained according to your compliance policy — typically 90 days to 1 year.
How do I ensure contractor access auto-expires after a project ends?
Every access grant in Cloudanix is issued with a mandatory TTL — there is no option to create standing access without an expiry. When the TTL reaches zero, Cloudanix automatically invalidates the session: STS sessions are not renewable, Azure role assignments are deleted, SSH certificates expire, and database credentials are revoked. If a contractor needs access beyond the TTL, they must submit a new request through the same approval flow. You can also set project-level policies that cap the maximum TTL for contractor identities — for example, no single session longer than 8 hours, and no contractor may hold active access for more than 30 days on a given account — enforced automatically without any manual review.
What Our Users Are Saying
Customer Reviews
Cloudanix is trusted by security leaders worldwide to deliver proactive, reliable, and cutting-edge cloud security.
One day, I changed the password of a root account, and my CTO called me within less than a minute to confirm if I did so. I was not expecting a reaction this quick. He told me Cloudanix alerted him of this password change and that he wanted to confirm as it was a critical security notification. I couldn't believe it!
Compliance is one way of staying secure, but what I want is the ability to go deeper and attain 'true security.' Cloudanix provides us the capability to do so.
Cloudanix is building for the future of the cloud, which makes the product all the more desirable.
Cloudanix gave us the visibility we were missing. Being able to move from permanent access to a robust Just-In-Time (JIT) workflow has fundamentally changed our security posture without slowing down our engineering velocity.
We are excited to leverage Cloudanix's comprehensive multi-cloud DevSecOps solution to secure our production workloads on AWS. Cloudanix has demonstrated that it can solve many challenges that DevSecOps teams face while continually adding new features such as SOC2 compliance and drift detection.
Managing third-party partner access was once a major concern for our security posture. With Cloudanix JIT Cloud, we've effectively achieved zero third-party risk. We can now grant access confidently, knowing that it is temporary, audited, and automatically revoked, resulting in a 100% reduction in our privileged access exposure.
The snooze feature and responsible alerts have helped us save time and prioritize what to tackle first.
Implementing Cloudanix JIT internally allowed us to practice what we preach. By eliminating permanent access to our own clouds and databases, we've neutralized the risk of standing privileges, ensuring our own 'keys to the kingdom' are never left exposed.
The problem with permissions is a lot of times, the gaps are left open due to oversights from inside the organization itself. With Cloudanix's CIEM, we get a complete view of user permissions and access. This enables us to update the permissions, reducing the attack surface.
In the world of Fintech, trust is our currency. Cloudanix provided the frictionless visibility we needed to secure our EKS workloads across AWS, ensuring we stay audit-ready for SOC2 and GDPR without slowing down our engineering velocity.
Cloudanix delivered value within 5 minutes of onboarding. Continuous monitoring, timely detection, and excellent documentation helped us attain a great cloud security posture.
Technology strategies and business strategies are in a state of constant change which includes centralization and decentralization of responsibilities. Regardless of strategic shift, we still have intellectual property to protect. Cloudanix are critical partners for us in our public cloud security posture across our three cloud providers.
Cloudanix has been amazing. They opened up a common Slack channel with us — and it feels like we are talking to our own team and getting things done with Cloud security. The support team is always available, friendly, helpful, and ready to go out of their way.
Beyond just access management, Cloudanix CSPM has given us a unified view of our AWS environment. The real-time alerting and anomaly detection allow us to prevent any untoward activity before it happens, which is critical for a marketplace connecting 50+ financial institutions.
For a Fintech company, data is our most valuable — and most sensitive — asset. Cloudanix DAM hasn't just improved our visibility; it has given us control. The ability to mask data and prevent unauthorized queries in real-time is a game-changer for our compliance and customer trust.
Our clients, especially in the Middle East financial sector, demand absolute accountability. Cloudanix JIT Cloud has been a competitive differentiator for us, allowing us to provide secure, governed access to customer accounts that meet their strictest audit and compliance requirements.
Cloudanix is always on my team's lips because of its exceptional support. Be it a small or big query, Cloudanix has gone above and beyond to resolve them. This one's a keeper for us.
For a long-lasting partnership, great support goes a long way. Cloudanix has delivered exceptional support whenever required. Their edge is their team is always ready to go beyond to solve any issues that we have. This speaks volumes about the culture at Cloudanix.
Beyond the technology, Cloudanix feels like an extension of our own team. Their willingness to stand up a dedicated Middle East tenant for us and provide exceptional support at a sensible price makes them a long-term partner for Hugosave.
The real-time notifications that Cloudanix provides are a real lifesaver. Their adaptive notifications ensure that my team stays productive and doesn't get interrupted all the time.
The whole point in technological evolution is to help improve the world we live in. We must protect that and to do so requires an effective and efficient security strategy. The Cloudanix team helped make our public cloud security posture management strategy a reality. The symbiotic relationship we have allows for a continuous feedback loop which is how business should operate.
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