They don’t clock in, take vacations, or fill out HR forms—but non-human identities (NHIs) are everywhere in your digital environment. Bots, APIs, service accounts, machine identities—they’re running automation, managing integrations, and keeping the cloud humming. But while they power your infrastructure, they’re often overlooked in your security strategy.
And that’s a big problem.
Most non-human accounts are over-permissioned, under-managed, and nearly invisible—making them perfect targets for cyber attackers. It’s time to bring them out of the shadows and treat them like the first-class identities they truly are.
The Silent Risk Lurking in Your Environment
When non-human identities are ignored, they become ticking time bombs. Here’s why:
No Clear Owner
Who’s responsible for that service account created two years ago? Nobody knows—which means no one’s watching it. This makes accountability and remediation efforts difficult. Compounding this issue, human users often misuse NHIs, bypassing access controls and creating tracking and auditing challenges.
Over-permissioned and under-secured
NHIs often have more access than they need, making them a dream for attackers. They often suffer from inadequate password cycling, unknown dependencies, and the use of non-complex passwords that are susceptible to brute-force attacks.
Shared and misused
When multiple applications share the same credentials, access control goes out the window—and so does accountability. This breaks the principle of the least privilege and makes security enforcement difficult.
Weak secrets management
Hardcoded passwords, poor rotation practices, and missing audit trails are all too common and an enormous risk.
Environment creep
A lack of environment segregation further increases risk. NHIs used across both production and non-production environments or shared credentials across systems increases the blast radius in the event of a breach.
And let’s not forget: secrets are everywhere. As digital footprints grow across on-prem, cloud, SaaS, and DevOps pipelines, secrets sprawl becomes a serious threat. If you’re not managing them proactively, it’s only a matter of time before they’re exposed.
From Exposure to Enforcement: 3 Moves That Make a Difference
Getting non-human identities under control isn’t impossible. It just takes structure, automation, and the right mindset. Start here:
1. Enforce Least Privilege—No Exceptions
Shrink your attack surface by giving each account only the access it absolutely needs. No more, no less.
- Grant minimal permissions based on role.
- Separate admin and operational accounts.
- Review and adjust access regularly to prevent privilege creep.
2. Treat Secrets Like Secrets
Credentials should never be an afterthought. Protect them like crown jewels. Ensure encryption at rest and in transit and secret rotation without downtime or disruptions.
- Store secrets securely using dedicated secrets management tools.
- Rotate credentials regularly without causing downtime.
- Design systems to retrieve secrets dynamically—not hardcoded.
3. Govern the Lifecycle
From creation to decommissioning, the entire non-human identity lifecycle must be managed and should follow a clear, auditable process.
- Keep an up-to-date inventory with named owners.
- Define policies for creation, use, and retirement.
- Use automation to provision and deprovision accounts.
- Regularly review for stale or unused identities—and clean them up.
Final Thought: Don’t Wait Until It’s a Headline
Non-human identities are only going to grow in number and complexity. The sooner you start treating them like the critical threat they are, the stronger your security posture will be. Out of sight shouldn’t mean out of mind. Bring your NHIs into the light—and lock them down.
