The Zero Standing Privilege Platform for Every Identity in Your Cloud
Standing privileges keep your attack surface open around the clock. Apono is a Zero Standing Privilege platform that makes elevated access temporary by default. Apply Just-in-Time (JIT), Just-Enough access across clouds, Kubernetes, databases, and more from one policy plane, for human and non-human identities, including AI agents.
Trusted by security, IAM, and DevOps teams
The problem
What gets in the way of Zero Standing Privilege
Fragmented visibility
Thousands of permissions across AWS, Azure, and GCP make it hard to see who has access to what.
Standing privileges
Many granted privileges go unused, but they still widen your attack surface.
NHI sprawl
Non-human identities can far outnumber people, and each one can add secrets and attack paths to manage.
Static roles
Pre-created roles can’t keep up with how fast cloud environments change.
Remediation paralysis
Teams know many identities have too much access, but fear of breaking something keeps that access in place.
Manual approval bottlenecks
Ticket queues slow down access and can stretch out incident response.
Auditability requirements
Auditors want full logs of every elevation, and scattered tools make those logs hard to pull.
Privilege bloat
Over-scoped identities widen the blast radius if any one of them is compromised.
The shift
Turn access chaos into controlled access
Watch standing access turn into least privilege. With Apono, access is time-bound, based on context, and fully logged, so engineers can keep building while risk goes down.
The solution
Zero Standing Privilege across your whole cloud
Replace always-on permissions with JIT, Just-Enough access governed by adaptive policies. You shrink your attack surface and blast radius, and engineers get approved access in seconds, not hours. A full audit trail helps you keep Zero Standing Privileges in place as you grow.
Find overprivilege, then remove it
Apono shows who has what access, how they use it, and how sensitive it is. Access Discovery surfaces dormant and excessive privileges across your environment, so you can quarantine unused accounts and fix the riskiest access first.
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Enforce Zero Standing Privileges everywhere
Access Flows turn your policies into JIT, Just-Enough access with a full audit trail. Depending on the Access Flow policy, a request can be approved automatically or routed to the right approver. Access expires automatically at the end of the approved window, so engineers get what they need in seconds, not hours, and nothing stays behind.
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Prove control and make audits easier
Apono logs every request, approval, grant, and revocation from start to finish, with anomaly alerts and evidence on demand. Your security and compliance teams can show exactly how privileges are controlled, which can help improve audit readiness.
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Use cases
Apono use cases for stronger cloud access control
Reach Zero Standing Privileges across your cloud and keep them in place. Shrink your attack surface and blast radius with policies that scale and match how your business works.
Break-glass access with guardrails
Give responders emergency access that’s JIT, tightly scoped, short-lived, and fully audited. Apono can validate requests using incident and on-call context, so teams can respond faster without adding standing risk.
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Secure database access
Engineers request access to specific databases or tables when they need it. Credentials are temporary, work moves faster, and standing database access goes away.
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Achieve Zero Standing Privileges
Convert always-on rights into JIT, Just-Enough access across cloud, clusters, and data. Your attack surface shrinks while your teams keep shipping.
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Support compliance
Every elevation becomes a short, traceable event. Evidence and reports are ready when auditors ask, which supports faster, cleaner reviews.
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Secure non-human identities
Find service accounts, tokens, and other machine identities, then right-size their access to enforce least privilege. You reduce risk without breaking key infrastructure or workflows.
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Customer stories
How customer teams achieve Zero Standing Privileges with Apono
From 72 hours to 5 seconds for production RDS access
“Apono eliminated delays and excessive privileges.”
Yaron Blachman, CTO & CISO
400 employees
98% attack surface reduction for Kubernetes
“Now, engineers can combine narrow roles together like Lego bricks to achieve their goals.”
Aaron Bacchi, Sr. DevSecOps Engineer
200 employees
Hours of manual work removed every week
“Apono allows us to generate temporary permissions upon request on a very granular set of restrictions, delivering huge value to the business.”
Roy Ido, Information Security Manager
1000+ employees
Zero Standing Privilege platform FAQs
What are standing privileges, and why are they risky?
Standing privileges are always-on permissions that stay in place even when no one needs them.
- They give attackers a target that’s open around the clock.
- They make lateral movement easier if any single account is compromised.
- They pile up over time as people change roles and keep old access.
- They can grow the blast radius of one compromised account to much of your infrastructure.
What is Zero Standing Privilege?
Zero Standing Privilege is a security model where no identity keeps permanent privileged access to critical systems. Access is granted only when it’s needed, and it’s removed automatically.
- All privileged access is temporary and granted JIT and Just-Enough.
- Permissions expire automatically at the end of the approved access window.
- Removing always-on privileged accounts shrinks your attack surface.
- Removing excess sensitive privileges shrinks your blast radius.
- It puts least privilege into practice at scale across your cloud.
How does Apono’s Zero Standing Privilege platform work?
Apono replaces permanent access with temporary, fully audited JIT and Just-Enough permissions that expire on their own.
- Convert static IAM roles into dynamic, temporary Access Flows.
- Grant permissions only when they’re needed, for only as long as the approved window.
- Expire access automatically when the window ends.
- Get help reducing excessive privileges without interrupting workflows.
- Keep emergency break-glass access available without standing privileges.
What’s the difference between Zero Trust and Zero Standing Privileges?
Zero Trust assumes no implicit trust. Zero Standing Privileges complements Zero Trust by removing permanent privileged access.
- Zero Trust verifies every request, no matter where it comes from.
- Zero Standing Privileges removes persistent privileged access.
- The two work together: Zero Trust is the architecture, and Zero Standing Privileges is one way to put it into practice.
- Apono supports both with verified, temporary JIT access.
What risk reduction can we expect?
When teams compare Zero Standing Privilege platforms, this is usually the first question. Results depend on your environment, but Apono customers have reported large drops in standing access.
- OpenWeb reduced standing privileges by 94%.
- Labelbox reduced its Kubernetes attack surface by 98%.
- Cybereason removed hours of manual permission work each week.
- Explore our customer stories for more.
How do you handle emergency and break-glass access?
Responders can get fast emergency access while you keep Zero Standing Privileges.
- Apono can validate break-glass requests using incident and on-call context.
- Depending on the Access Flow policy, requests can be approved automatically or routed to the right approver.
- A full audit trail shows who accessed what and why.
- Access expires automatically at the end of the approved access window.
- Approval routing can be based on risk for different emergency types.
Can we roll out Zero Standing Privileges gradually, or does it need a big-bang approach?
You can start with your highest-risk resources and expand from there.
- Begin with production databases or cloud admin roles.
- Use Access Discovery to find and prioritize excessive privileges.
- Move one team or service at a time to JIT access.
- Expand coverage at your own pace as each group settles in.
Learn more about Zero Standing Privileges
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