Zero Trust Starts with Identity: How to Secure NHIs and AI Agents in 2025

Read full article here: https://www.britive.com/resource/blog/rewriting-zero-trust-rules-identity-foundation/?source=nhimg

The old Zero Trust model built on network perimeters and device checks is obsolete. In 2025, identities are the new security perimeter, and that includes not just human users but a massive surge of Non-Human Identities (NHIs) like API keys, service accounts, automation scripts, and AI agents.

Modern enterprises now have 10–40x more NHIs than human users, and these machine identities are 7.5x riskier, operating invisibly across cloud, SaaS, and DevOps environments. Traditional IAM tools and static access models fail to address this new reality, leaving organizations vulnerable to over-privileged NHIs, persistent access risks, and blind spots in AI-driven automation.

To adapt, Zero Trust must evolve from network-centric to identity-centric security, shifting control from firewalls to context-aware identity actions.

Key strategies include:

• Eliminating Standing Privileges - Move to just-in-time, ephemeral access for both human and non-human identities.

• Enforcing Context-Aware Guardrails - Factor in role, resource sensitivity, and behavior for every access request.

• Securing Identity Actions, Not Just Networks - Protect critical API calls and service operations, regardless of where they originate.

• Full Lifecycle Auditing - Log every identity interaction from request to revocation for compliance and incident response.

In the era of AI agents and machine-speed automation, identity must become the control plane. Access needs to be dynamic, verifiable, and governed by Zero Trust principles, especially for NHIs that spin up and down in seconds.

Britive helps organizations implement Identity-First Zero Trust by automating least-privilege access, managing NHI entitlements, and providing full visibility into both human and non-human identities across cloud environments.

Zero Trust begins with identity. The sooner organizations embrace this shift, the faster they can reduce their attack surface while enabling innovation at scale.