Zero Standing Privileges vs Credential Vaulting

Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP), where no user or system account has access unless there is a task being performed, is a milestone goal for most security teams. No always-on accounts, no secrets sitting around “just in case,” and nothing waiting to be misused.

For a long time, privileged access management (PAM) has meant using credential vaults to store, rotate, and protect privileged credentials like administrative passwords, SSH keys, and API tokens.

But do these methods align with the principles of Zero Standing Privileges, or are they simply relocating the risk of standing privileges elsewhere?

This blog explores that question by comparing both vault and vault-free approaches to privileged access management, examining whether each supports or hinders Zero Standing Privileges.

To Vault, or Not to Vault?

…that is the question. When assessing privileged access management strategies, modern organizations are presented with two options:

1. Manage and distribute privileged access with vaults to store and rotate secrets (i.e., legacy PAM)
2. Manage privileged access with just-in-time and identity-based credentials, shedding rotation and vault processes altogether

Both approaches protect privileged access, but differ significantly in how they balance security control, operational efficiency, and user experience. The table below illustrates how these approaches compare.

Understanding this distinction is critical, as it directly affects your organization’s ability to achieve ZSP. Vaults, despite their controls, ultimately introduce additional operational and security challenges.

How Vaults Perpetuate Standing Privileges (Among Other Risks)

Credential vaults remain a core element in many enterprise PAM deployments. Yet, as security models move to address zero trust, non-human identities, and ZSP itself, the limitations of vaults become clear.

1. Stored credentials = standing privileges

Vaults secure and rotate credentials, but they still rely on stored, reusable secrets. According to CISA’s FY23 Risk & Vulnerability Assessments report, valid privileged accounts were responsible for 41% of successful attacks. Every password or key that exists in a vault represents a potential period of standing privilege until rotated or revoked. Even vaults themselves require privileged service accounts to function, introducing another layer of persistent access risk.

2. Credential overhead = human error risk

Vault and credential management workflows depend on precise configuration and consistent maintenance. Missed rotations, delayed revocations, or misconfigured policies can leave dormant credentials active longer than intended. In fast-moving DevOps and AI environments, these manual gaps create persistent exposure – i.e., exactly the type of risk Zero Standing Privileges seeks to eliminate.

3. The AI and machine identity explosion

As automation expands, non-human identities now outnumber human ones. Service accounts, APIs, and AI agents often use persistent tokens or embedded keys to communicate between systems. Vaults can store and rotate these secrets, but they cannot remove them entirely, meaning standing credentials continue to exist, even if they are being managed.

4. Visibility and accountability blindspots

Vault-based PAM can make it difficult to trace actions back to specific identities. Logs might show who retrieved a password, but not who used it or what was done afterward. This creates accountability challenges, particularly in agentic AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) workflows where even less activity or identity context is available.

5. Vaults themselves are a growing target

While vaults consolidate control, they also concentrate risk. A compromised vault or misconfigured access policy could expose a large number of privileged credentials simultaneously. The recent Vault Fault vulnerabilities uncovered flaws in leading vault products. In some instances, attackers were able to bypass controls, escalate privileges, or even take full control of the vault.

How to Implement Zero Standing Privileges Without Vaults

A vault-free approach to PAM takes a different approach by eliminating the existence of static credentials and standing privileges entirely. Instead, access is granted dynamically through short-lived, identity-bound certificates and tokens that expire automatically once the task or session is complete.

This approach aligns naturally with ZSP principles by making privileged access both temporary and traceable.

• Eliminate vaults and secrets: The best defense against vault risks is not having one. Teleport eliminates static credentials, keys, and secrets by issuing short-lived X.509 certificates bound to identity, eliminating the need for long-lived vaulted secrets or standing privileges.
• Remove human error from identity and access management: Teleport ensures that engineers never need to rotate, share, or check in/out credentials. Without dependency on human discipline and repetitive vault and credential management processes, Zero Standing Privileges can confidently scale alongside new infrastructure and the adoption of new tech.
• Enforce least privilege by default across all identities: Teleport’s least privileged access model delivers just-in-time access bound to the task at hand, whether it's a human engineer or AI agent. Every certificate is cryptographically secured, tightly defined to the task and role, and time-limited.
• Full, identity-traceable auditability: Tie every session and action to the identity that requested it, revealing exactly who accessed what, when, and why in real time. Even AI agents operating through MCP are authenticated and logged at the identity level, closing the accountability gap vault and secrets-based access exposes.

The Takeaway: Vaulted Privileges Are Standing Privileges

As long as secrets exist, they can be stolen. As long as privileged accounts persist, they can be compromised.

Vault solutions can offer some reduction to your immediate attack surface. However, their existence is ultimately a barrier to achieving true Zero Standing Privileges – a barrier that will only increase as infrastructure expands and human and non-human identities multiply.

Get Started

Teleport was built around identity and verification, not vaults or networks. There are no secrets to rotate and no standing credentials to hide. Every request is verified in real time, every session recorded and summarized, and every privilege ephemeral by default.

It’s time to stop hiding standing privileges. Discover how to reduce them to zero (true zero) with Teleport.

Additional Resources:

• Watch: Eliminating Privileged Access Toil with Infrastructure Identity
• Read: Securing Identity in the Age of AI: A Buyer’s Guide