5 Proven Tools for Just-In-Time Access Management in 2026

Just-in-time (JIT) access isn't one product category. It shows up in three kinds of tools, and most companies run more than one:

• Serval is the pick for employee access to apps and roles: requested from the help desk in Slack or Microsoft Teams, approved, granted for a set time and removed automatically when the time runs out.
• Standalone JIT access platforms (Opal, Apono) that run the same request, approve and revoke cycle in a separate tool.
• PAM suites (Idira, BeyondTrust) for privileged credentials: vaulting, rotation and recorded admin sessions. They work alongside a JIT tool like Serval.

This guide is for IT and security leaders who want to remove standing access without adding a new queue for approvers or a new tool for employees to learn. It covers what each tool does, which JIT job it solves, and how it fits with the others.

What is just-in-time access management?

Just-in-time access management grants the minimum access a person needs for a task, for a set window, then revokes it automatically. People request access when they need it, an approver signs off and the grant expires on its own, so nobody keeps permanent admin rights by default. The result is less standing access for attackers to abuse and a clean audit trail of who had what, when and why.

Your identity provider (Okta or Microsoft Entra) sits underneath all of these tools. More on that below.

JIT access from the help desk

1. Serval

Serval is an AI-native ITSM platform with access management built in. It runs the whole JIT lifecycle on a help desk ticket: request, eligibility check, approval, provisioning, active access, automatic revocation and logs.

Serval grants access for a set time, routes the approval in Slack or Teams, and removes access automatically when the time runs out, using the same method it used to grant it.

How it works (docs):

• Request where people already work. Employees ask in Slack, Microsoft Teams or the Serval portal. If they don't know which role they need ("I need Figma"), Serval guides them to the right one.
• Eligibility first. Access profiles decide who can request a role, by group or by profile fields like department.
• Approvals that fit the risk. Access policies set a maximum duration, a recommended duration and whether a business justification is required, which Serval checks for reasonableness. Approvers can be specific people, groups (with a quorum), the requester's manager, app or role owners, or a custom approval workflow, in sequential steps. Approvers can adjust the requested duration when they approve.
• Four ways to grant access. Provisioning methods: add the user to an Okta, Entra, Google or Rippling group; call the app's API directly; run a custom workflow (for example, open a Terraform pull request for AWS access); or create a manual task for apps with no API, with a matching removal task when access expires.
• Automatic revocation. When the window closes, Serval removes access the same way it granted it. Users can extend access from any ticket or shorten it, and extensions follow the same approval rules.
• Clean-up beyond expiry. Reclamations remove access people stop using, based on last-login data, and user access reviews produce certification evidence for SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
• Setup in plain language. Catalyst, Serval's admin agent, configures roles, profiles, policies and provisioning from a plain-language description and drafts them for review. Nothing goes live until you publish. Custom provisioning workflows run as deterministic TypeScript you can read and edit.

Customer proof: With Serval, Together AI automates 95% of its just-in-time access requests and Serval assists with the remaining 5%. "Serval is performing all of the authorization logic for granting access to infrastructure for us, and it's doing it in a transparent way," says Todd Thiel, Senior Manager of Enterprise Security. SeatGeek distributed 406 Claude licenses through Serval with zero human touch.

Unlike standalone access platforms, Serval is the help desk itself, so an access request is a ticket that sits in the same queue, analytics and SLA reporting as the rest of IT's work.

Where Serval stops: Serval doesn't vault passwords or record privileged sessions. Pair it with a PAM suite for those; Serval connects to both suites covered below.

Which ITSM platforms measure time-to-access for just-in-time requests?

Serval records what you need to measure it on every access request. Each request logs when it was created, the duration requested, the duration approved, the approval decision and when access expires, and each request is tied to a help desk ticket. You can report on it two ways:

• Ticket analytics: Serval's analytics track time to resolve for every ticket, including access requests, and export it as CSV.
• Custom dashboards: dashboards can query access request data directly alongside tickets, assets and workflow runs, so you can chart approval time and request volume by app or role.

Because Serval provisions through direct API calls in seconds where an app supports it, the main variable in time-to-access is usually the approval step, which these views make visible. The full audit log also exports as CSV.

Standalone JIT access platforms

Opal and Apono do the same job as Serval's access management: they take the request, route the approval, grant access through their own connectors and revoke it when time runs out. The difference is that each is a separate tool with its own request flow, outside the help desk.

2. Opal

Opal describes itself as "an AI-native access governance platform." Its just-in-time access is built to "grant privileged access only when it's needed, and revoke it automatically when the work is done" (Opal). Employees request access from the Opal UI, Slack or the Opal CLI, and approvers can approve or reject in Slack, which provisions access automatically (Opal docs). When short-lived access expires, "Opal will automatically revoke your access."

How Serval compares: both expire access automatically. Serval runs the request as a help desk ticket, so the same platform also resolves the rest of employees' IT requests. Already on Opal? Serval's Opal integration can provision and revoke Opal access and file requests in Opal, so employees still just ask in Slack or Teams.

3. Apono

Apono, now part of 1Password, calls itself "the cloud-native privileged access management platform that grants just-in-time access to humans, machines, and AI agents, then revokes it automatically" (Apono). It creates permissions "in the native policy language of AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and your databases," and engineers "request and receive JIT access through Slack, Teams, Jira, or the CLI."

How Serval compares: Apono writes short-lived permissions in each cloud's native policy language. Serval runs the request as a help desk ticket, so the same platform also resolves the rest of employees' IT requests.

PAM suites with JIT: use them alongside Serval

PAM suites secure the privileged credentials themselves: they vault passwords, rotate them and record admin sessions. Serval doesn't do that, and a PAM suite isn't a help desk. Most teams that run one pair it with a JIT tool for everyday access requests.

4. Idira by Palo Alto Networks (formerly CyberArk)

CyberArk's platform is now Idira, "built on CyberArk's legacy and powered by Palo Alto Networks" (Idira). Its PAM offering combines vaulting, zero standing privileges and session isolation: "ephemeral privileges are created for the duration of a task and destroyed automatically when work ends," and it can "isolate and record every sensitive session across infrastructure and SaaS" (Idira PAM).

How it works with Serval: Idira keeps the vault and the recorded sessions. Serval's CyberArk integration grants safe membership just in time and triggers credential rotation, without ever retrieving a vaulted secret.

5. BeyondTrust

BeyondTrust offers JIT in two products. Privileged Remote Access creates "just-in-time access to all your enterprise environments: cloud, on-premises, and OT," with "every session automatically recorded and logged." Entitle provides "self-service privileged access that is auto-revoked after a set duration, ticket resolution, or on-call rotation," requested through Teams, Slack or Jira.

How it works with Serval: Serval connects to BeyondTrust Password Safe to request time-limited access to managed accounts and rotate passwords, and to Privileged Remote Access to grant and revoke asset group access and rotate vault credentials.

How Serval works with Okta and Microsoft Entra

Okta and Microsoft Entra are identity providers, and Serval works on top of them. When an approved request uses group provisioning, Serval adds the user to an Okta or Entra group, your IdP's existing rules grant the app access, and Serval removes the user from the group when access expires (docs). Serval also imports your IdP groups and suggests roles to manage, without changing existing memberships.

Both IdPs also sell their own time-bound access features:

• Okta Identity Governance lets admins "define which users can request access to specific apps, how long should they have access, and who should approve their access request" (Okta). It's an add-on to core Okta (pricing).
• Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) "provides time-based and approval-based role activation" for Entra roles, Azure resource roles and group membership (Microsoft Learn) and needs Microsoft Entra ID P2 or Entra ID Governance licenses (licensing).

Serval's access policies work the same way whether an app sits behind Okta, Entra, Google Workspace or Rippling groups, is provisioned by API, or still needs a manual task, and the request is handled on a help desk ticket.

Which JIT tool for which job

Key principles for a JIT rollout

• Start with your IdP and HR data. Reuse the groups you already have so access maps to real teams.
• Match approval to risk. Auto-approve low-risk roles within a short window; send admin and production roles through multi-step approval.
• Make expiry the default. Set a maximum duration on every elevated role and let extensions go back through approval.
• Measure time-to-access. Track request-to-grant time by app and approver so you know where the wait actually is.
• Keep the evidence. Exportable logs and periodic access reviews are what auditors ask for.

Choose Serval when

Choose Serval when you want just-in-time access to live in the help desk your employees already use, with approvals in Slack or Teams, automatic revocation through your IdP or the app's API, and approval time you can measure per app. If you also need vaulted credentials and recorded privileged sessions, run Idira or BeyondTrust alongside it; Serval connects to both.

Frequently asked questions

What is just-in-time access management?

Just-in-time access management grants the minimum access needed for a task, for a set time window, then revokes it automatically. It replaces standing admin rights with access people request when they need it, approved and logged.

How do I automatically deprovision access after a set time window?

Set a maximum access duration on the role and use a tool that revokes access when it expires. In Serval, the access policy sets the limit, and Serval removes access with the same method it used to grant it: removing the user from the IdP group, calling the app's API, running a deprovisioning workflow or creating a removal task.

How can I reduce the time between an access request and provisioning?

Remove manual hand-offs. Let employees request in Slack or Teams, auto-approve low-risk roles, and provision through IdP groups or direct API calls. Serval provisions by direct API in seconds where an app supports it, and records when each request was created and approved, so you can see where requests wait.

What's the difference between PAM and just-in-time access management?

PAM secures the privileged credentials themselves, with vaulting, rotation and session recording. JIT access management decides who gets which role and for how long, then grants and revokes it. Many teams run both: a PAM suite for vaulted admin sessions and a JIT tool like Serval for everyday access requests.

Can Serval work with Okta or Microsoft Entra?

Yes. Serval provisions access by adding users to Okta or Entra groups and removes them when access expires. It imports your existing IdP groups and suggests roles to manage, so you keep your IdP as the source of truth.