How should teams govern access when AI agents and secrets collide?

TL;DR: Attackers are increasingly targeting access rather than applications, using compromised tokens, OAuth-connected apps, and AI-driven automation to accelerate reconnaissance, exploitation, and exfiltration, according to Entro Security and Anthropic. The decisive control problem is now identity governance for non-human access, not just perimeter defence.

NHIMG editorial — based on research published by Entro Security.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should teams govern non-human identities in AI-heavy environments?

A: Teams should govern non-human identities the same way they govern other privileged assets: assign ownership, minimise scope, rotate credentials regularly, and monitor for abnormal use.

Q: Why do secrets and tokens create a larger risk than application vulnerabilities?

A: Secrets and tokens matter because they bypass many application controls once stolen.

Q: What is the difference between a service account and an OAuth-connected app?

A: A service account is usually a workload identity created for a specific system task, while an OAuth-connected app is a delegated identity that gains access through consent and scoped authorization.

Practitioner guidance

• Audit all non-human credential locations Inventory tokens, API keys, certificates, and OAuth grants across code repositories, CI systems, ticketing platforms, and collaboration tools.
• Shorten exposure windows for secrets and tokens Automate detection and revocation so that publicly exposed credentials are invalidated within minutes, not days.
• Review delegated app scopes quarterly Treat OAuth-connected apps as privileged machine identities and validate their scopes, owners, and business purpose on a fixed cadence.

With 44% of NHI tokens exposed in the wild, according to The 2025 State of NHIs and Secrets in Cybersecurity, the control gap is structural rather than incidental?

👉 Read Entro Security’s analysis of AI-driven access attacks and NHI exposure →

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