However, this approach also exposed organizations to enormous risks. What Are the Risks of Using a Jump Server? Once users were inside the perimeter, they faced fewer internal security measures. Jump servers, like Active Directory ® domain controllers, allowed admins to establish a secure perimeter around IT resources. It also paralleled the way most organizations implemented identity and access management (IAM) across their environments. This approach had numerous benefits, including ease of use after login, and aided organizations in meeting compliance regulations because they could provide straightforward audit logs. Once authenticated there, they could traverse to other servers without having to log in again. The idea was simple: Designate one server as the control point and force users to log into that system first. The jump server, or jump box, was a mainstay for many IT organizations and DevOps teams as a way to establish a clear funnel through which traffic passed to their infrastructure. In this article, we’ll discuss why jump servers are an obsolete solution for modern DevOps organizations and explore how an emerging cloud architecture can replace them and improve security. However, for many organizations, there’s a better way to provide secure access to their infrastructure. Some organizations still use jump servers to provide access to their data centers and Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud servers.