Topic starter
24/06/2026 9:21 pm
TL;DR: ASPM and CNAPP improve cloud posture but neither is designed to secure non-human identities, which Entro Security says remain a leading exposure point in cloud applications. That gap matters because NHI privileges are often over-permissive, reused, and rarely retired, making lifecycle governance the decisive control.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Entro Security: “ASPM vs CNAPP – Which Solution To Choose”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when ASPM and CNAPP are used as NHI controls?
A: They break at the point where visibility is mistaken for governance.
Q: Why do over-permissive identities increase risk in cloud AI environments?
A: Over-permissive identities let small configuration errors become high-impact events because the identity can reach more systems than the task requires.
Q: How do teams know if NHI governance is actually working?
A: Look for complete inventory coverage, clear ownership, enforced rotation, and reliable decommissioning.
Practitioner guidance
- Define NHI ownership and offboarding Assign explicit owners for service accounts, tokens, certificates, and API keys, then require revocation when the workload or vendor relationship ends.
- Inventory machine credentials and reuse Build a current register of non-human identities and flag credentials reused across multiple environments, applications, or pipelines.
- Separate posture findings from identity findings Route ASPM and CNAPP alerts into a parallel review for machine identity scope, rotation age, and ownership so identity debt is not hidden inside cloud noise.
Bottom line: ASPM and CNAPP improve cloud and application visibility, but they do not close the governance gap around machine identities.
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25/06/2026 6:31 am
ASPM and CNAPP do not solve NHI governance because they are posture tools, not identity lifecycle controls. They can improve visibility into cloud-native applications, containers, and runtime conditions, but that does not answer who owns a service account, when a token should be revoked, or whether an API key still belongs in production. The implication is that identity governance must remain a separate control plane for NHIs, even in mature cloud programmes.
A few things that frame the scale:
- NHIs outnumber human identities by 25x to 50x in modern enterprises, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations add NHI governance before or after cloud posture tooling?
A: NHI governance should not wait for perfect posture tooling, because access debt compounds even in well-monitored environments. Organisations need both, but machine identity ownership, rotation, and offboarding are the controls that actually limit who can still get in.
👉 Read our full editorial: ASPM vs CNAPP leaves a gap in NHI governance