Peer approval / Peer-Genehmigung

Peer approval is an access-governance control that requires a qualified colleague, typically a teammate or role peer outside the requester’s direct control, to approve a sensitive action or access change before it takes effect. 

It operationalizes the “four-eyes principle” inside identity systems so that no single person can grant themselves powerful rights, check out secrets, or push high-risk changes. In modern stacks, peer approval is enforced inside Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) workflows, Privileged Access Management (PAM) vault checkouts, and Just-in-Time (JIT) access requests, and it complements strong authentication like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). 

Rather than replacing managerial sign-off, peer approval adds a same-tier, context-aware reviewer who understands the technical impact, which is especially useful for production access, policy exceptions, break-glass account usage, and emergency change windows.

How does it affect identity security?

Peer approval reduces insider risk and privilege abuse by separating request and authorization while preserving speed. Tied to least privilege, it ensures elevated rights are both appropriate and understood by someone doing similar work, not just a distant approver. 

When combined with JIT access and Zero Standing Privileges (ZSP), peer approval limits powerful entitlements to short, auditable windows, shrinking the attack surface for credential theft and phishing. Within PAM, it governs password or key checkout for root, domain-admin, and cloud admin roles; within IGA, it guards entitlement changes, role grants, and application owner exceptions. 

Effective implementations bind the approval to ticket context and business justification, require phishing-resistant MFA at decision time, and write tamper-evident logs for post-incident review or certifications. In cloud environments, peer approval also curbs risky sprawl that CIEM tools surface by forcing a knowledgeable second person to validate scope before rights expand. The result is a pragmatic control that aligns with Zero Trust while keeping engineers productive.

Case study

A mid-size fintech adopted peer approval for production database elevation through its PAM and IGA stack. Engineers requested JIT access to a read-only role when investigating incidents; a designated peer had to review the ticket, verify the dataset and time window, and approve from a hardened admin workstation using MFA. 

During a phishing campaign, an attacker who had obtained a developer’s primary credentials tried to request broader write privileges. The on-call peer noticed the unusual scope and off-hours timing, denied the request, and flagged the attempt. Automated playbooks revoked active sessions, rotated credentials, and opened an Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) case. 

Because the company operated with ZSP and peer approval, the attacker never obtained standing production rights, and no customer data changed. The audit trail later supported a targeted improvement to roles, keeping privileges tightly aligned with Least Privilege without adding operational drag.

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