Reference

Access management glossary

The terms that come up when a team decides standing access has to go, defined in a sentence or two, each with a link to the guide that goes further.

Access creep — also privilege creep, entitlement creep

The build-up of permissions a person keeps after the reason for each one has ended. It happens because granting has a trigger (a request) and removal usually does not. Guide.

Access package

A named bundle of access that is requested, approved and expires as one unit. In TemprBac it is a set of directory groups across several systems. Microsoft uses the same name for the central object in Entra entitlement management.

Access request

A person asking for specific access, for a stated reason and time, recorded before it is granted. The speed of this path decides whether people give up standing access. Guide.

Access review — also user access review, recertification

A periodic check, by someone who can judge it, that each person still needs the access they hold — followed by removals that are actually verified. Guide.

Break-glass access

A path to privileged access for emergencies, used rarely and noisily. The name covers two emergencies: sign-in itself failing, and an approval nobody is answering. Guide.

Emergency access account

A small number of highly privileged accounts kept outside normal sign-in controls so the tenant can be recovered if those controls fail. They hold standing privilege by design. Guide.

Ephemeral permissions

A permission created in the target system for one task and deleted afterwards, rather than membership of something that already exists. Guide.

Entitlement

Any single grant of access — a role, a group membership, an application permission — treated as the unit that is requested, reviewed and removed.

Group-based access control

Authorizing through membership of groups rather than by granting people directly. Cloud RBAC, GitHub teams and SaaS apps all accept a group, which is why one group membership can carry access across systems. Guide.

Identity governance and administration (IGA)

The discipline, and product category, covering access requests, reviews and the joiner-mover-leaver lifecycle across an organization.

Joiner-mover-leaver (JML)

The three moments access should change: when someone joins, changes role, or leaves. Movers are where access creep starts, because new access is added and old access is rarely removed.

Just-in-time access — also JIT access

Granting access at the moment it is needed, for a bounded time, and removing it automatically afterwards. Revocation is the half that decides whether it worked. Guide.

Least privilege

Giving an account only the permissions its work requires. It limits how much access; it says nothing about how long. Guide.

Non-human identity

An identity used by software rather than a person — a service account, a workload identity, a CI job or an AI agent. A coding agent in a terminal is the awkward case: it acts as the person who ran it. Guide.

Privileged access management (PAM)

The controls over accounts that can change systems, read sensitive data or grant access to others: vaulting, session recording, elevation and the rest. Guide.

Privileged Identity Management (PIM)

Microsoft's feature in Entra ID for time-bound elevation to roles and group membership, within Microsoft's own platform. Guide.

Session recording

Capturing what happened in a privileged session — commands, output, sometimes video — through a gateway or proxy, for audit and investigation.

Separation of duties

Arranging access so no single person can complete a sensitive action alone — for example, so the person requesting production access is not the one approving it.

Standing access — also standing privilege

Access held continuously, whether or not it is being used. The opposite of time-bound access, and the thing zero standing privilege removes.

Time-bound access

Access with an end time set when it is granted, removed automatically when that time arrives. Guide.

Zero standing privilege — also ZSP, zero standing access

The goal that no account holds privileged access while it is not being used. Guide.