Post-incident reviews across industries repeatedly find the same pattern: attackers gain initial access through a relatively low-privilege foothold, then escalate by harvesting credentials for domain admin, database, or cloud root accounts that were left standing, shared, or poorly monitored. Privileged accounts remain the highest-value target because they grant the broadest reach with the least additional effort.
From standing privilege to just-in-time access
Mature PAM programs eliminate standing administrative access wherever feasible, replacing it with just-in-time elevation that grants privilege only for the duration of an approved task, then automatically revokes it. Session recording and command logging for privileged sessions create an audit trail that both deters misuse and accelerates investigation when something does go wrong.
Service accounts and application credentials deserve equal attention to human administrators, since they are often provisioned once, forgotten, and never rotated—becoming long-lived, high-privilege targets hiding in plain sight.
JIG designs and implements PAM programs that close the credential escalation paths attackers rely on most.