What is Human Privilege?

Human Privilege secures access for the people in your organization, including administrators, developers, and workforce users reaching servers, databases, Kubernetes clusters, and cloud consoles and CLIs. It ensures secure just-in-time access through dynamic permissions, centralized policy enforcement, and strong device and user identity, helping organizations reduce risk and meet regulatory requirements.

PingOne Privilege also includes Agent Privilege, which secures access for AI agents acting on behalf of users. If you’re securing AI agent access to MCP servers and Git repositories, see What is Agent Privilege?

Core capabilities

PingOne Privilege provides the following core capabilities for effective privileged access management:

Centralized management of privileged access for cloud and on-premises resources
Just-in-time (JIT) access with temporary, auto-expiring credentials
Fine-grained policy enforcement and least-privilege access controls
Credential lifecycle automation and rotation
Strong device and user identity verification
Comprehensive audit logging and activity monitoring
Support for both human and workload (machine) identities

Overview of how Human Privilege works

PAM before and after Human Privilege

Assignment	Before Human Privilege	After Human Privilege
AWS, GCP, and Azure roles	Roles permanently assigned through identity provider. Administrators must manually manage role life cycles on an ad-hoc basis. Roles might have excessive permissions. Identities might inherit incorrect permissions. Access reviews take significant time.	Automatic and manual JIT access. Least-privileged roles. Save time in access reviews.
Custom roles, permissions, and policies	Time-consuming to implement. Requires significant expertise. Requires continual maintenance.	Automated. Leverages cloud native APIs.
SSH, DB access controls	Requires many static credentials that must be managed. Creating, rotating, revoking, and tracking credentials is expensive. Employees might share credentials, creating security risks.	No static credentials. Passwordless solution. Access using native tools.
Kubernetes cluster	Complex systems of roles and permissions are difficult to manage. Lack of granular controls.	JIT granular access control.
Cloud CLI (AWS, GCP, Azure)	Long-standing static credentials.	JIT access with no static credentials and native tools.
Approval process	Policy construction and review are complex. Access reviews are time-consuming. IAM teams are backlogged with lots of tickets.	Automated. Users don’t have to worry about cloud syntax for policy creation. Decentralized approval system.

Assignment

Before Human Privilege

After Human Privilege

AWS, GCP, and Azure roles

Roles permanently assigned through identity provider.

Administrators must manually manage role life cycles on an ad-hoc basis.

Roles might have excessive permissions.

Identities might inherit incorrect permissions.

Access reviews take significant time.

Automatic and manual JIT access.

Least-privileged roles.

Save time in access reviews.

Custom roles, permissions, and policies

Time-consuming to implement.

Requires significant expertise.

Requires continual maintenance.

Automated.

Leverages cloud native APIs.

SSH, DB access controls

Requires many static credentials that must be managed.

Creating, rotating, revoking, and tracking credentials is expensive.

Employees might share credentials, creating security risks.

No static credentials.

Passwordless solution.

Access using native tools.

Kubernetes cluster

Complex systems of roles and permissions are difficult to manage.

Lack of granular controls.

JIT granular access control.

Cloud CLI (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Long-standing static credentials.

JIT access with no static credentials and native tools.

Approval process

Policy construction and review are complex.

Access reviews are time-consuming.

IAM teams are backlogged with lots of tickets.

Automated.

Users don’t have to worry about cloud syntax for policy creation.

Decentralized approval system.