TL;DR: Machine identities now sit at the centre of several recent breach paths because service accounts, API keys, and tokens often carry broad, always-on access, according to Token Security's analysis of recent attacks. The governance problem is not simply credential volume, but the assumption that machine access behaves like human access and can be managed the same way.
At a glance
What this is: This is a machine identity risk analysis showing how service accounts, API keys, tokens and certificates expand the attack surface when they remain discoverable, over-privileged and hard to govern.
Why it matters: It matters because IAM and PAM teams have to treat non-human access as a distinct governance problem, not a human-user problem with different credentials attached.
By the numbers:
- Reported data compromises increased from 1,801 in 2022 to 3,205 in 2023, a 78% increase over the year, according to Token Security.
Context
Machine identity attack surface is the total set of service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates and other non-human identities that can be compromised or misused. The article argues that this surface is widening faster than the controls built to inventory, rotate and revoke those identities.
The governance gap is not just volume. Machine identities often run with standing privilege, lack MFA, and are embedded in applications or cloud services in ways that make human-style access reviews and offboarding workflows unreliable.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when organisations keep using standing privileges for machine identities?
A: Standing privilege turns NHIs into persistent trust anchors. If the credential is embedded in code, reused across environments, or left valid after the workload changes, the access outlives the business purpose. That creates a durable attack path and makes it difficult to prove that the identity is still needed.
Q: Why do machine identities create larger lateral movement risk than teams expect?
A: Machine identities often have wider, longer-lived access than human users and are embedded in application dependencies. When those identities cross domains or service boundaries, a single compromise can pivot into multiple systems. That is why service-account governance belongs in the same conversation as access containment and directory design.
A: Security teams should treat machine identities as first-class identities, not secondary technical artifacts. That means applying governance, access review, lifecycle controls, and privileged access discipline to service accounts, API keys, bots, and workload identities. Cloud shared responsibility does not remove customer accountability for identity sprawl, over-privilege, or unmanaged access paths. Behavioral and anomaly-based analytics help spot misuse that static controls can miss.
Q: How do security teams know if machine identity governance is working?
A: Look for fewer standing accounts, faster onboarding of automation workflows, auditable role approvals, and visible retention of access records after logout. If teams still depend on manual tracking to explain machine access, governance is only partially effective. Working machine identity governance should reduce both operational overhead and review friction.
Technical breakdown
Why machine identities accelerate attack progression
Machine identities often already have the permissions an attacker wants, so the attack chain can skip the noisy early phases associated with human compromise. A stolen token, service account or API key can immediately provide access to cloud storage, SaaS tools or internal systems without phishing, MFA bypass or password guessing. That is why the article maps machine identity abuse to the credential access and lateral movement stages in MITRE ATT&CK. The technical issue is not merely secret theft, but the fact that the stolen secret may already be trusted for high-value actions across multiple systems.
Practical implication: treat machine credentials as direct-path assets and prioritise detection on privileged use, not just initial compromise signals.
Why rotation is harder for embedded secrets and service accounts
The article highlights a common machine identity failure mode: credentials that are embedded in applications, tools or integration workflows cannot always be rotated without breaking production dependencies. That makes long-lived secrets persist well beyond the point where teams think they have control. In cloud environments, proprietary identity services and linked dependencies also make it difficult to build a complete inventory, which means teams may not know what can be safely rotated, revoked or reissued. The result is governance debt that accumulates inside the runtime layer.
Practical implication: map dependency chains before changing machine credentials so rotation does not become an availability event.
How permissive access turns NHIs into lateral movement paths
Non-human identities are frequently granted broad administrative or integration privileges, then left without regular recertification or revocation. Once compromised, that standing access can be used to read, write, delete and pivot across connected services. The article's examples show how one exposed credential can lead to access across storage, collaboration platforms and code repositories. In MITRE ATT&CK terms, the consequence is not only credential access but also discovery, lateral movement, collection and exfiltration through an identity that was already authorised to move widely.
Practical implication: reduce standing privilege on service accounts and tie each identity to a bounded, reviewable business function.
Threat narrative
Attacker objective: The attacker objective is to turn one compromised machine identity into broad internal access, data theft and faster movement across connected cloud services.
- Entry occurred when attackers or researchers found a token, credential or over-shared link that exposed a machine identity or storage path.
- Credential access followed through reuse of the exposed secret, service account or token, which was already trusted by downstream systems.
- Escalation and movement then expanded into cloud storage, collaboration suites or code repositories because the machine identity carried broad standing access.
- Impact came through data exposure, credential theft and faster attacker movement inside systems that were supposed to be protected by the same identity controls.
Breaches seen in the wild
- Co-op cyber attack 2025: Attackers linked to Scattered Spider tricked their way into a Co-op employee account and stole personal data of all 6.5 million members.
- HPE Aruba Instant On hard-coded credentials: Hard-coded admin credentials in HPE Aruba Instant On access point firmware let anyone bypass login (CVE-2025-37103); no exploitation reported.
Read our 52 NHI Breaches Analysis report for a comprehensive view of breaches impacting Non-Human Identities including AI Agents.
NHI Mgmt Group analysis
Machine identity attack surface is now a governance problem, not a discovery problem: the article shows that service accounts, API keys and tokens are already part of production access paths, not a side inventory. Once those identities are embedded in application workflows, they behave like standing infrastructure privileges rather than discrete credentials. That means the real issue is governing scope, ownership and revocation across runtime dependencies. Practitioners need to stop treating machine identity as an asset list and start treating it as an access model.
Standing privilege is the failure mode that matters most: the article repeatedly shows that when a non-human identity is compromised, the damage comes from access that was already broad and always on. This is exactly where access review assumptions break down, because review cadences are too slow for identities that can be used immediately and silently. Identity blast radius: the amount of downstream reach a single service account or token can unlock. Practitioners should measure machine identity risk by reachable systems, not just by credential count.
The old human-access control model does not scale to machine identities: MFA, manual recertification and employee-style offboarding do not map cleanly to accounts that power integrations, workloads and automated tasks. The article's examples show that a machine identity can outlive the person or process that created it, which creates persistence without accountability. That changes the governance question from 'who owns the account?' to 'what production dependency prevents its safe retirement?' Practitioners need a lifecycle model that matches runtime reality.
MITRE ATT&CK is useful here because it exposes the speed of machine identity abuse: once an attacker obtains a valid secret, they can skip several traditional intrusion phases and move straight into authorised activity. That shortens the detection window and makes prevention dependent on better inventory, tighter privilege boundaries and faster revocation. For identity teams, the takeaway is simple: the attack surface is defined by what a stolen secret can reach, not by where the secret is stored.
Machine identity security is converging with cloud governance and PAM: the article points to a practical truth that cloud IAM, PAM and secrets governance now overlap at the same failure points. Organisations that manage those controls separately will keep missing the dependency chains that make one compromised identity spread across storage, code and collaboration platforms. Practitioners should expect the category to mature toward unified inventory, ownership and enforcement across all non-human access paths.
What this signals
Machine identity controls have to move closer to issuance time: access reviews built for human users assume the identity persists long enough to be certified, but service accounts and tokens often exist to execute quickly and silently. The programme implication is to govern issuance, scope and expiry before a credential is ever placed into a live dependency.
Identity blast radius is the right operating concept for this problem: the question is not how many machine identities exist, but how far one compromised identity can move across cloud storage, SaaS and code systems. Security teams should use that reach to prioritise review and containment.
Cloud-native identity governance now has to cover ownership, dependency mapping and revocation together, because a machine identity that cannot be safely retired is already a control gap in production.
For practitioners
- Inventory every non-human identity Build a complete map of service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates and managed identities, including where each is used and what it depends on.
- Bind each credential to an owner and business purpose Require a named owner, purpose and expiry condition for every machine identity so orphaned accounts do not survive team or application changes.
- Reduce standing privilege on integrations Strip service accounts and tokens back to the minimum permissions needed for the integration or workload, then validate the reachable systems they can touch.
- Track rotation by dependency, not by calendar only Before rotating embedded secrets, identify the applications, pipelines and cloud services that will fail if the credential changes.
- Monitor machine identities for unusual reach Alert on new destinations, administrative actions, cross-service pivots and access occurring outside the normal workload pattern.
Key takeaways
- Machine identities widen the attack surface because they often keep standing access long after the systems that use them have changed.
- The article's breach examples show that one exposed token or service account can open storage, collaboration and code systems at once.
- The practical answer is to inventory non-human identities, reduce their privilege and make revocation possible without breaking production.
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 and MITRE ATT&CK address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 sets the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-02 — Secret Leakage | Leaked tokens and credentials drive the breach paths discussed in the article. |
| NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | The article repeatedly shows machine identities carrying broad access far beyond their task scope. | |
| NHI-07 — Long-Lived Secrets | The article highlights long-expired or never-rotated machine credentials as a core exposure pattern. | |
| Recommendation — Scan for exposed machine secrets and revoke any credential that appears in code, logs or shared storage. Reduce service account scope to the minimum reachable systems needed for each workload. Set expiry and rotation rules for machine credentials that cannot be tied to a short-lived workload need. | ||
| MITRE ATT&CK | TA0006;TA0008 — Credential Access; Lateral Movement | The article maps machine identity abuse to credential theft and rapid movement across cloud services. |
| Recommendation — Map exposed machine credentials to credential-access and lateral-movement detections in your threat hunting pipeline. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-05 — Access Permissions, Entitlements and Authorizations | The article is fundamentally about entitlement scope and how it enables abuse of machine identities. |
| Recommendation — Review and tighten entitlements for every machine identity before it reaches production dependencies. | ||
Key terms
- Machine Identity Attack Surface: The machine identity attack surface is the total set of non-human identities that can be discovered, compromised or misused in an environment. It includes service accounts, tokens, API keys, certificates and managed identities, plus the access paths those credentials unlock across cloud and SaaS systems.
- Standing Privilege: Standing privilege is access that remains active even when no immediate task requires it. For NHI programmes, it is a common failure mode because long-lived credentials and persistent roles create unnecessary exposure. Reducing standing privilege usually means tighter expiry, on-demand access, and clearer review of who or what still needs access.
- Identity Blast Radius: The amount of damage a compromised identity can cause across systems, data, and infrastructure. In NHI environments, it is shaped by permissions, network reach, and administrative capability rather than by the credential alone. Reducing blast radius is a containment strategy that limits lateral movement and data exposure.
- Embedded Secret: An embedded secret is a credential, token, API key, or certificate that has been placed inside an image, file, or configuration bundle. Once exposed, it can outlive the original control that created it, so revocation and rebuilds become necessary even if the underlying system is later patched.
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 July 6, 2026.
Updated on October 6, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group, the independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org