TL;DR: Non-human identities now outnumber human identities by as much as 20 to 1, and CyberArk says that makes ownership, access review, and least privilege central to reducing orphaned and over-privileged machine accounts. The real governance shift is treating NHIs as first-class identities with accountable owners and routine review, not as invisible infrastructure.
At a glance
What this is: CyberArk argues that NHI governance breaks down when ownership is unclear, access reviews are ad hoc, and privileges are left broader than the workload requires.
Why it matters: IAM and PAM teams need to treat service accounts, bots, and APIs as governed identities because orphaned or over-privileged NHIs expand audit gaps and blast radius across cloud and business workflows.
Context
Non-human identity governance is the discipline of assigning, reviewing, and constraining machine accounts, service accounts, bots, and APIs so they do not become unowned access paths. The problem is not that these identities exist, but that they are often created faster than programmes can map ownership or scope.
CyberArk's analysis frames NHIs as a governance problem, not just an infrastructure convenience. When teams cannot say who owns an identity, why it exists, and whether its access still matches its function, the identity lifecycle is already out of control.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when non-human identity ownership is unclear?
A: When ownership is unclear, rotation stalls, reviews default to approval, and nobody feels safe removing access. That creates orphaned identities, stale credentials, and broad permissions that persist because the organisation cannot prove what depends on them. The result is a growing attack surface with no accountable decision-maker.
Q: Why do service accounts and workloads become overprivileged over time?
A: They usually inherit access for a launch or integration and then keep it long after the original purpose changes. Without lifecycle enforcement, access is rarely revalidated against current use, so permissions drift upward while ownership becomes unclear. Over time, that turns ordinary operational identities into persistent security exposure.
Q: How should security teams run access reviews for non-human identities?
A: Security teams should scope reviews by risk pattern, assign every identity to an accountable owner, and require a documented decision for each item in scope. The workflow should allow direct remediation for obvious cases and owner follow-up for the rest. The goal is not just certification but a clean audit trail and a clear end state for each credential.
Q: Should organisations treat NHIs differently from human users in IAM?
A: The governance rules are similar, but the operating model is different. NHIs need owner mapping, entitlement review, and least privilege just like human users, but they also need machine-aware lifecycle controls because they can be created in bulk, hidden inside integrations, and forgotten when applications change. Treat them as first-class identities, not as invisible infrastructure.
Technical breakdown
Why NHI ownership mapping fails in practice
Non-human identities are often created by application teams, integration tools, or automation workflows rather than by a central identity team. That breaks the usual assumption that the creator is also the accountable owner. Ownership mapping has to separate who provisioned the identity from who is responsible for its purpose, scope, and review. Without that distinction, service accounts and API identities become orphaned as teams reorganise or applications change hands. The operational challenge is not discovery alone, but maintaining a current owner record that survives role changes and application transfers.
Practical implication: tie every NHI to a named business owner and make ownership transfer part of application and role change processes.
How access reviews expose orphaned and overprivileged NHIs
Access reviews are the main control that reveals whether a machine identity still has a valid business purpose. For NHIs, the review cannot rely on user-centric assumptions such as manager approval or annual recertification alone, because these identities often persist invisibly inside integrations and cloud services. The review needs to confirm current purpose, actual entitlements, and whether the identity still exists for a live workload. Regular automated review helps surface identities that have outlived their task and permissions that were never reduced after the original use case changed.
Practical implication: run recurring NHI access reviews that validate purpose, entitlement scope, and continued business need.
Least privilege for service accounts, bots, and APIs
Least privilege for NHIs means the identity should hold only the permissions required for the current machine function, not the broad access that was convenient at creation time. In practice, overprivilege often persists because the identity is embedded in a workflow, so teams are reluctant to narrow access after launch. That creates unnecessary exposure when a software bug, misconfiguration, or credential leak occurs. Privilege should therefore be treated as a living attribute of the workload, not a one-time provisioning decision.
Practical implication: continuously reduce NHI permissions as workloads evolve, and remove access that is no longer required for function.
NHI Mgmt Group analysis
Ownership is the first NHI control, not a governance afterthought. Machine identities do not become safe because they are technical rather than human. The governance failure begins when the organisation cannot name a responsible human owner who can answer why the identity exists, who should review it, and when it should be retired. That makes accountability the prerequisite for every other NHI control.
Access review programmes still assume identities are visible and intentionally maintained. NHIs break that assumption because they persist inside integrations, automation, and cloud services long after the original justification has faded. Regular review is therefore less about paperwork and more about discovering identities whose access outlived their purpose. The practical lesson is that reviews must be automated and frequent enough to catch identities that would otherwise disappear into infrastructure.
Overprivileged NHI is a distinct blast-radius problem, not just a policy violation. When a service account or API key keeps access that the workload no longer needs, the identity becomes a permanent expansion point for failure. That exposure matters even if no attacker is present, because software bugs and misrouted workflows can still activate the excess privilege. The right lens is blast-radius reduction through continuous entitlement trimming.
NHI sprawl creates governance debt that traditional IAM processes were not designed to absorb. Human-centric access governance expects a smaller, more legible set of identities with clear managers, predictable review cycles, and obvious offboarding triggers. NHIs break that model because they are numerous, ephemeral in purpose, and often embedded in machine-to-machine dependencies. The field should treat NHI governance as a dedicated control plane, not as an extra line item inside human IAM.
From our research library:
- NHIs outnumber human identities by 25x to 50x in modern enterprises, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 69% of security leaders agree identity management must fundamentally shift to address agentic AI systems, according to the 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
- Read next: Top 10 NHI Issues
What this signals
NHI sprawl is now a governance design problem: when service accounts, bots, and APIs are created faster than they are owned, reviewed, and retired, the identity programme loses the ability to prove who is accountable for access at any point in time.
The most important shift for IAM teams is to stop treating machine identities as exceptions to human governance. Ownership, review cadence, and privilege scope have to be explicit control points, otherwise the programme will continue to absorb hidden access debt as cloud and automation use cases expand.
For practitioners
- Assign accountable owners to every NHI Build a process that records a named human owner, a business purpose, and a review cadence for each service account, bot, API token, or integration identity.
- Automate recurring NHI access reviews Review machine identities on a quarterly or more frequent schedule, and verify purpose, entitlements, and whether the identity is still in use.
- Reduce standing privilege on machine identities Remove permissions that are no longer required for the current workload, and revalidate access when the role or integration changes.
- Map creation to ownership transfer Separate the person or team that created the identity from the person or team that must manage it after application handoff, reorganisation, or role change.
Key takeaways
- The article's central warning is that non-human identities become risky when organisations cannot assign owners, review access, and narrow permissions as workloads change.
- CyberArk cites research suggesting non-human identities outnumber human identities by as much as 20 to 1, which helps explain why manual governance breaks down.
- IAM teams should govern NHIs as first-class identities with explicit accountability, recurring review, and least privilege as operating requirements.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 addresses the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and CIS Controls v8 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 — Improper Offboarding | The article centres on NHIs that outlive their purpose because no one owns retirement. |
| NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | The article explicitly warns that many NHIs retain permissions beyond current need. | |
| NHI-07 — Long-Lived Secrets | NHIs often persist as embedded accounts or tokens that remain in use far longer than intended. | |
| Recommendation — Track every NHI to a retirement trigger and revoke it when the workload or owner changes. Review machine entitlements regularly and remove access that exceeds the workload's function. Shorten NHI secret lifetimes and tie rotation to business ownership and review cycles. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-05 — Access Permissions, Entitlements and Authorizations | The post is about governing who or what can keep access, and for how long. |
| Recommendation — Apply entitlement governance to NHIs so permissions are reviewed and reduced as use changes. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-5 — Account Management | The article focuses on maintaining ownership and review for machine accounts across their lifecycle. |
| Recommendation — Centralise machine account inventory and enforce ownership, review, and removal workflows. | ||
Key terms
- Non-Human Identity (NHI): A digital identity assigned to a non-human entity such as a software application, service account, API key, bot, machine, or AI agent that enables it to authenticate and interact with systems without direct human involvement. NHIs now outnumber human identities in most enterprises by 25 to 50 times.
- Access Review: A formal process for confirming whether access is still needed and justified. In IAM programs, the review becomes an evidence-bearing control when decisions are recorded, scoped correctly, and traceable to the right reviewer, application owner, or auditor.
- Least Privilege: A security principle requiring that every identity, human or non-human, is granted only the minimum permissions necessary to perform its function. Least privilege is the single most effective control for reducing NHI blast radius.
- Orphaned Identity: An orphaned identity is a service account, token, or other machine credential that no longer has a clear owner, purpose, or retirement path. These identities create compliance and security risk because they are easy to forget, difficult to review, and often remain active long after they should have been removed.
Deepen your knowledge
NHI governance, agentic AI identity, and machine identity lifecycle are core topics in our NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme. If you are building or maturing an IAM programme, it is worth exploring.
Published by the NHIMG editorial team on May 29, 2026.
Updated on October 8, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group, the independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org