Roadblocks in projects need to be handled swiftly. Having to deal with an employee, not in the office? Well, with impersonation you can stay on track.
When working with major clients or teams, delayed delivery looks unprofessional, and this one tool helps prevent both escalations and keep your customer experience positive.
What is Temporary Access?
Temporary access is when we give someone permission to use certain systems, apps, or data for a limited time, even though they don't usually have these rights.
This can be in the case of the development, data engineering, product bugs, or even a specific service you providing your clients with.
The reality is quick turnaround shows professionalism and quality - and through impersonation, you make sure you do not compromise on these two aspects of your business.
Also, once your team has finished the respective task or when their time is up, you can take away this access.
Fastest Ways to Grant Temporary Access Without Risking Credentials
1. Just-in-Time Access
In cases where an employee is absent, caught up with other work or out on leave indefinitely allowing your employees access using JIT access is feasible.
What does this mean? Well, with Just-in-time or JIT access you allow members of your company or even vendors and partners to privileged access for a limited amount of time.
In cases where it’s all internal, your admin can enable this quickly through your IAM or IGA software, while making sure they keep full track and records who had access and made changes to specific files during this time frame.
2. Using Time-Limited Access Tokens
Time-limited access tokens work like digital passes that expire after a certain time. We can give these tokens to users or applications when they need to access specific resources. This works especially well in cloud systems and with APIs where we need to set up temporary access for automated tasks or system connections.
For instance, when we need to let a third-party application connect to our APIs for a short time, these tokens make perfect sense.
They're much faster to set up than manually adjusting access settings, and we don't have to worry about unauthorized access after the token runs out.
3. Use Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC)
With role-based access control tools (RBAC), we grant permissions based on people's jobs within the company. This makes it much easier to manage access and quickly adjust temporary permissions by simply assigning or removing roles as needed.
Going 1 level deeper you can use attribute-based access control which means you can grant specific users access to certain features and delegate these access through impression temporarily.
This works much better than having to set up individual permissions for each person temporarily, and it reduces the chance of making mistakes when managing access.
4. Make Use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor authentication tools add an extra security step by asking users to prove their identity in multiple ways - like using both a password and a special code. This helps keep our systems secure even if you want to grant users access temporarily.
Worried that access may be exploited? That's fair! but using MFA you can make sure that two verification levels make sure that can only be granted by the right user.
Moreover, you can keep adaptive authentication in place to make sure that your access or even impersonation is granted after aspects like device IP address and geo-location are taken into account.
We can use different types of MFA, such as physical security keys, authentication apps, or even fingerprint scanning. A lot of the time this works out better than just relying on passwords, and it helps prevent unauthorized access even if someone's login information gets stolen or they fall for a phishing scam.
Situations Where You Need to Grant Temporary Access
1. During Sudden Leaves of Absence
When team members unexpectedly need to step away from work, we need to give their colleagues or supervisors the right access to keep things running. This way, important work doesn't come to a halt and projects stay on track.
We should carefully choose which access rights to grant based on what the person actually needs to handle, and then remove those rights when the original employee returns. Often, what this does is keep the work flowing while the person is away.
2. Working With Deadlines and the Need to Outsource Work to Other Teams
Sometimes deadlines force us to bring in help from other teams or departments. To make this work, we need to give these supporting teams access to the tools and information they need to help out.
It's important to only give them access to what they specifically need for their assigned tasks and to remove that access once the deadline has passed. This lets teams work together effectively while keeping sensitive information secure
3. Granting Access to Contractors or Vendors for Specific Projects
Working with outside contractors or vendors often requires giving them access to certain company systems or resources.
We need to be strategic about this - they should only get access to what they need to do their specific job, and that access should end as soon as their work is done. In doing so, you protect your sensitive information while still letting people (your employees) work effectively with external partners.
4. Granting Temporary Access for Troubleshooting or Maintenance tasks
Sometimes staff members need extra system access to fix technical problems or perform maintenance.
By giving them temporary elevated access, they can complete these specific tasks without permanently expanding their system rights. This keeps our systems secure by making sure people only have higher-level access when they actually need it.
5. Allowing Temporary Access to Sensitive Data for Audits or Investigations
During audits or investigations, certain people may need to access sensitive information that's usually off-limits.
When doing this, only grant this access when absolutely necessary and keep close track of how it's being used. What this does is help you follow or meet regulation requirements while also protecting confidential information.
6. Providing Access to Guest Users or External Collaborators for Limited Periods
Sometimes outside collaborators or guests need to access our systems - maybe for joining online meetings or working on shared documents.
To do this, set clear time limits on their access and remove it as soon as they're done. In doing so, you can prevent any security issues that could come from leaving access open after the work is complete.
Why Choose Infisign for Temporary Access?
Granting temporary access through Infisign makes the whole process easier with the access controls in place. Using attribute-based access control, you can delegate temporary or grant impersonation to users for a limited period and limit this based on geolocation or even IP addresses.
Again, this would only be in the situation where the user needs to access your software and the stakeholder with access is currently unavailable or out of office. In cases where you need access to internal platforms which your admin has full control over, with Infisign you can enable just in time access (JIT) to grant privileged access to employees.
More than this it also comes with unlimited directory sync and adaptive MFA SSO functionality that lets you log into your full tech stack in one go.
Want to know more? Reach out for a free trial!
