From Static to Strategic: Modernizing Privileged Access for Cloud Infrastructure

How modern enterprises are addressing strategic approach with IAM JIT

The promise of the cloud – agility, scalability, and innovation – has revolutionized how enterprises operate. Cloud infrastructure, delivered through services like IaaS and PaaS, now forms the backbone of the modern business.

However, as cloud environments expand in scale and complexity, a critical security challenge emerges: managing privileged access. Cloud engineers, architects, and administrators require elevated permissions to manage vital resources such as virtual machines, containers, databases, and network configurations across multiple providers. The traditional approach of granting "standing privileges"—access that is persistent and always available—has become a significant liability.

This outdated model creates a vast and static attack surface, making enterprises vulnerable to breaches, regulatory non-compliance, and operational inefficiency. In this article, we'll explore how modern enterprises are addressing this challenge with a strategic approach: IAM Just-in-Time (JIT) access.

The Peril of Standing Privileges in Cloud Infrastructure Management

Our IAM JIT solution is designed to eliminate the risks of standing privileges by providing a dynamic, policy-driven approach to privileged access. It is built on the core principle of least privilege, ensuring that access is granted only when it is needed, for the duration it is needed, and with the exact permissions required to complete a task. This effectively reduces the attack surface to zero.

One of our customers highlights this benefit perfectly, stating, "Long-standing access, which increased the attack surface, is now reduced to 0".

The solution isn't to remove all privileged access, as that would halt all operations. Instead, the solution is to fundamentally change how that access is granted and managed.

Introducing Cloudanix IAM JIT Access for Cloud Infrastructure Management

For organizations predominantly running EKS (Kubernetes) workloads, container security isn't just a best practice; it's a non-negotiable requirement. Containers demand a specialized, multi-layered approach to security.

Security for containers must span their entire lifecycle, from development to runtime:

Unmatched Multi-Cloud Platform and Resource Support

Large enterprises often have a presence in multi-cloud environments, creating a complex and fragmented security landscape. Our JIT feature is natively designed to alleviate such pain points, supporting any combination of the three major cloud providers. This means a unified security policy and a single pane of glass for all your cloud infrastructure, regardless of where it resides.

The solution's power lies in its broad resource coverage. It provides JIT access to not only cloud accounts with certain sets of permissions, but also directly to specific VMs and databases. This capability is critical because these resources are often the most targeted and hold the most sensitive data. We also extend our capabilities to external SaaS applications, showcasing their versatility beyond traditional IaaS/PaaS.
Access request and approval workflow of IAM JIT cloudanix dashboard

Granularity and Precise Control Over Permissions

A key differentiator of our IAM JIT capability is its ability to provide extremely granular control over JIT permissions. This goes far beyond simply granting "admin" access for a set period. We allow you to fine-tune access controls that align with the principle of "Just Enough Privilege" (JEP). You can specify access down to:

  • Specific Resource Instances: Instead of giving an engineer access to all production servers, you can limit it to a single, specific instance, such as ec2-instance-prod-web-01.
  • Specific Actions on a Resource: Permissions can be defined to allow specific actions, for example, ec2:StartInstances, but explicitly denying ec2:TerminateInstances.
  • Specific Time Windows: Access can be granted for a precise duration, whether it's 30 minutes, 1 hour, or a custom duration, after which it is automatically revoked.
  • Conditions: You can add conditional requirements, such as restricting access to a specific IP range or only allowing it during business hours, adding another layer of security.

This level of detail ensures that users are never over-provisioned with privileges, significantly lowering the risk of accidental misconfigurations or malicious activity.

Flexible Access Request and Approval Workflows

To ensure that security does not become a bottleneck for operations, our JIT solution offers a variety of ways to request and approve access. For cloud access, users can make requests through a simple self-service portal or via a seamless Slack integration. For VMs and databases, a CLI is also available, catering to the needs of power users and automated scripts.

The approval workflow is robust and highly configurable. It can be:

  • Fully automated based on predefined policies, allowing for rapid access for low-risk tasks.
  • Multi-level, requiring multiple approvals for highly sensitive access requests.
  • Delegated or escalated, ensuring that requests are never stuck waiting for a single approver.
  • Notified via Slack or email, ensuring approvers can act quickly.

This flexibility strikes the perfect balance between security and operational speed.
Access request and approval workflow of IAM JIT cloudanix dashboard
Log of access for cloud IAM JIT shown in Cloudanix dashboard

Comprehensive Monitoring, Auditing, and Reporting

Cloudanix provides a detailed and immutable audit trail for every access session. The system logs information on "who, what, when, where, why," providing a complete picture of all privileged activity. It also provides session logs, though not recordings, for specific protocols. Audit logs are retained for as long as a customer demands and can be integrated with existing SIEM solutions such as Splunk, Sentinel, and Elastic, for centralized security monitoring.

The reporting and analytics capabilities are equally powerful, offering valuable insights into privileged access behavior. The feature provides information on common requests, top users requesting access, denial rates, and compliance reports.

Seamless Integration with Existing Enterprise Identity Providers

We understand that large enterprises have existing identity management systems. Our JIT solution is built to integrate seamlessly with all major Identity Providers (IdPs) like Azure AD, Okta, Ping Identity, and Google Workspace. It leverages existing user identities and groups, which means no need to manage a separate set of credentials or user repositories. This integration simplifies user management and ensures that all access is tied back to a verifiable identity.

Automated Credential Management

Cloudanix simplifies credential management by supporting both secrets-based and certificate-based approaches. When JIT access is granted, it provides temporary cloud credentials that are automatically rotated, a critical security measure that prevents credential theft and reuse. This eliminates the risk associated with shared or long-lived credentials.

Simplified Access for Interconnected Services

Cloud infrastructure is rarely a set of isolated resources. Applications often span multiple services, such as a web server on a VM that connects to a database and stores data in an S3 bucket. Our JIT feature handles these complex scenarios by creating a role that spans across these interconnected services, allowing a user to access the role and manage all the necessary resources for a single task.

Agentless Deployment and Rapid Time-to-Value

For large enterprises, deployment can be a major hurdle. Our SaaS-based solution is designed for rapid and friction-free onboarding. It requires no agent installation and can be fully set up in less than 30 minutes. This minimal time-to-value means your organization can start securing its privileged access almost immediately, without a long, resource-intensive deployment cycle.

Why This Matters to Your Enterprise: Tangible Business Outcomes

The features of our IAM JIT solution translate directly into powerful business outcomes that resonate with every stakeholder, from the cloud engineer to the CISO.

  • Drastically Reduced Attack Surface: By eliminating standing privileges, you close the most common attack vector for cloud breaches. The temporary, time-bound nature of access means that a compromised credential has a very limited window to do damage, dramatically reducing the blast radius of any security incident. As one customer noted, our JIT solution is a game-changer for reducing the attack surface to zero.
  • Streamlined Compliance and Audits: Audit time is a major pain point for security teams. Our JIT solution provides a comprehensive, immutable log of all privileged activity, which simplifies the entire process. One customer enthusiastically shared that with our product, "My user access review with my auditors is a 1 min conversation because they get a complete visibility into user access and their behaviour". This not only saves time but also provides irrefutable evidence of least privilege enforcement.
  • Enforced Just Enough Privilege (JEP): The JIT feature helps enforce JEP in two ways. First, by its very nature, it grants only the permissions needed for a specific task. Second, our solution provides insights by showing over-permissive roles and users, helping teams right-size permissions and further harden their security posture.
  • Improved Operational Efficiency: The ability to request and approve access through familiar tools like Slack, combined with a self-service portal, empowers engineers to get the access they need quickly and efficiently without creating security gaps. The agentless, 30-minute onboarding ensures a rapid return on investment.
  • Enhanced Security Posture and Differentiators: Our product stands out from the competition with several key differentiating features, including AI-driven insights, advanced anomaly detection, specific multi-cloud orchestration capabilities, and seamless integration with existing tooling. These features collectively contribute to a stronger, more proactive security posture that anticipates and prevents threats rather than just reacting to them.

A Strategic Shift to Just-in-Time Security

The era of standing privileges is over. For large-scale enterprises managing complex cloud infrastructure, a strategic shift to IAM JIT access is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Our solution empowers your teams with the access they need to do their jobs effectively while simultaneously providing a security model that eliminates the attack surface, streamlines compliance, and enhances operational efficiency. By leveraging the power of our IAM JIT feature, you can transform your privileged access management from a security risk into a strategic advantage.

Ready to secure your cloud infrastructure and simplify your access management? Connect with our team to schedule a on-deman demo now.
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