The Non-Human Identity Management Group launched a Poll on LinkedIn asking the industry how we classify Service Accounts, System Accounts, API Keys, OAuth Tokens, Secrets etc.
- 200+ votes – it was a very close race, with Non-Human Identity just edging ahead of Machine Identity ???
- Non-Human Identity actually won by a large margin, if we look at unique votes per organisation
- We had approx. 80 companies vote, so a very broad vote and opinions from the industry
Does it really matter what term we use?
- The vast majority of Vendors seem to use the Non-Human Identity (NHI) term – is there a VC play here?
- Gartner / Microsoft / CSA seem to use Machine Identity Term, but :
- CSA have just launched a survey about Non-Human Identities
- Gartner mentioned Non-Human Identities in Security & Risk Summit 2023
So are we ever going to converge on a common term?
- Very unlikely – the main thing is we need to focus on as an industry is helping customers solve Non-Human Identity / Machine Identity / Workload Identity risks.
- The debate rages on !!!
