How Alpacon works

Alpacon replaces always-on SSH access with access that is requested, approved, time-bound, and recorded. Instead of holding standing credentials to your servers, you ask for exactly the access you need, use it, and it expires on its own.

The product is organized into three areas you’ll see in the sidebar: ACCESS, EXECUTION, and AUDIT. This page explains the ideas behind them so the rest of the docs make sense.

No standing access: the work session

A work session is a time-limited, approved grant of access to one or more servers. Instead of connecting whenever you want, you:

  1. Request a session that says which servers you need, what you’ll do (terminal, file transfer, commands, and so on), and for how long.
  2. A workspace admin approves it (superusers are approved automatically).
  3. You use the approved tools until the session expires or you end it.

This keeps access scoped to the task and the time window, and it leaves nothing behind when you’re done. See Request a session to try it.

You connect as yourself

There are no shared logins to check out. Your Alpacon identity is your identity on the server, so file ownership, sudo, and the audit trail all resolve to you.

  • On Linux servers you always connect as your own account.
  • On Windows and macOS servers, users with the right privilege can also pick a system account.

On Windows, the selected account is an audit label only: commands run as SYSTEM, so access is governed by your Alpacon roles rather than by the account shown. See Windows servers.

Access is managed centrally through IAM users and groups, so changing or removing someone’s access happens in one place. See Account selection for the details.

MFA at the moments that matter

Alpacon asks for multi-factor authentication when it needs to confirm a person is present, not on every command. One verification covers your sessions for a set time window, and sensitive actions like connecting with a system account or running privileged commands can require a fresh step-up.

This is why sudo in a terminal can prompt for verification the first time and then run uninterrupted for a while. See sudo with MFA and your security settings.

Everything is recorded and analyzed

Every work session produces a complete record on a single timeline: the commands run, files transferred, sudo grants, and terminal recordings, all in one place. After a session ends, Alpacon adds an AI risk analysis that summarizes what happened and flags anything notable.

That means audit isn’t a separate system you have to stitch together by hand. See Audit and After a session.

Where you’ll find these

The sidebar groups everything into three stages:

A single session flows through all three: you request it (ACCESS), an admin approves and can watch it (EXECUTION), and it’s recorded and analyzed for later review (AUDIT).

Next steps

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