Zero Standing Privilege for Modern Identity Security

Imagine protecting a skyscraper where floors rearrange themselves, new rooms appear overnight and elevators connect to random floors. The structure is constantly shifting in ways you can’t fully predict or control. That’s the modern cloud infrastructure — powerful, but a security nightmare. 

In this ever-changing environment, organizations’ most sensitive systems are under constant siege. Every second, cybercriminals launch sophisticated attacks on privileged access — the keys to your digital kingdom. These accounts are often overloaded with excessive and risky permissions, scattered across internal and external users, both human and non-human.

Without the right controls, privileged access could be any organization's Achilles' heel.

The multi-million dollar problem hiding in plain sight

As companies accelerate digital transformation and AI agent adoption they're inadvertently creating a sprawling maze of administrative credentials. Privileged access is everywhere across cloud services, SaaS applications, and infrastructure components. Each one is a potential golden ticket for attackers—granting them unrestricted entry to sensitive data, critical systems, and the ability to move laterally across the enterprise.

The risks are undeniable: According to the 2023 Forrester report, 80% of data breaches involve privileged credentials, with average breach costs reaching $4.88 million. Yet most enterprises still rely on outdated, disparate or even homegrown PAM solutions that can’t match the agility and scalability that today’s cloud environment demands.

 ¹2023 Forrester research

Why legacy PAM can’t keep up:

• Expanding attack surface: Each new service doesn’t just add privileged accounts — every new AI agent also requires secrets and API keys to operate at scale, further multiplying the complexity of securing access.
• Visibility gaps: Fragmented tools create blind spots across multi-cloud and hybrid environments, as well as within isolated networks.
• Operational nightmare: Legacy PAM solutions require extensive infrastructure, complex integrations and lengthy deployments, often resulting in incomplete governance during critical transformations.
• Compliance complexity: Regulatory requirements demand capabilities that legacy solutions struggle to deliver — not only standardized security controls, but also the ability to streamline privileged access audits, which are often costly, time-consuming, and painful to complete.

Rethinking Zero Standing Privileges: moving beyond the illusion of control 

For years, the security industry has promoted Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP) as a cornerstone of modern identity security. The idea is simple: reduce the risks of privileged access by removing long-lived permissions. Yet in practice, many implementations still fall short—merely gating access through approvals while leaving dormant elevated permissions in place. 

To achieve true ZSP, organizations need to move beyond traditional models and embrace approaches designed for today’s dynamic environments. This means shifting from static, role-heavy access models to ephemeral, just-in-time access that ensures privileged rights exist only when they’re needed.

A mature ZSP program should enable:

• Removal of the static or long lived privileges
• Time-bound, least-privilege access
• Temporary role-based access elevation
• Provisioning of ephemeral privileged accounts

The benefits extend far beyond operational efficiency:

• Zero privileged account maintenance and zero cleanup
• Drastically reduced insider threat and credential theft risk
• Narrower damage scope if credentials are compromised
• Automatic compliance enforcement with auditable trails

With no standing privileges or persistent attack surface, there's no window for opportunistic breaches.

Why PAM needs to evolve — and how Saviynt leads the way

Instead of relying on fragmented, standalone tools that leave gaps and add management overhead, Saviynt delivers scalable, intelligent PAM through a holistic lifecycle management model—converged with IGA.

• Lightning-Fast Deployment: Built on an agentless, cloud-native architecture, Saviynt PAM eliminates the deployment headaches of traditional tools. From day one, organizations gain immediate visibility across their entire infrastructure.
• Converged Identity Security Platform: Unlike bolt-on solutions, Saviynt PAM is built on an industry-leading IGA foundation. This convergence enables seamless privileged identity lifecycle management with no gaps, no silos, and no compromises.
• AI-Powered Discovery Engine: Saviynt continuously discovers and maps privileged workloads, accounts, and entitlements across infrastructure, clouds, and applications in real time. No more chasing application owners for access details.

Saviynt embraces Zero Trust principles to secure today’s dynamic ecosystem. Just-in-time Access eliminates standing privileges. Every request is validated. Every session is monitored. Every privilege is earned. No assumptions. No shortcuts. No compromises.

With Saviynt PAM, users get precisely the permissions they need, only for the duration required, with automatic revocation upon completion. That’s true Zero Standing Privilege, not the “gated” version that leaves privileged access sitting idle between approvals.

To learn more, please visit the Saviynt PAM webpage.