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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.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Entro Security: ASPM vs CNAPP – Which Solution To Choose
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern non-human identities alongside ASPM and CNAPP?
A: Treat ASPM and CNAPP as visibility and posture layers, then govern NHIs as a separate lifecycle domain.
Q: Why do cloud-native environments create more non-human identity risk?
A: Cloud-native systems create many short-lived services, integrations, and pipelines that all need machine access.
Q: What breaks when machine identities are not retired properly?
A: The organisation loses control over who or what can still act on behalf of the system.
Practitioner guidance
- Create a unified NHI inventory across app and cloud teams Link each service account, token, API key, and certificate to the application, pipeline, or workload that depends on it.
- Separate posture findings from identity decisions Use ASPM for application risk and CNAPP for cloud posture, but require a separate review step for the NHIs those systems depend on.
- Enforce expiry and retirement triggers for machine identities Tie every non-human identity to a workload, integration, or pipeline end state.
What's in the full article
Entro Security's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The article's side-by-side ASPM and CNAPP feature comparison for teams choosing a cloud security stack
- Specific examples of how NHIs show up in cloud-native architectures, including service accounts, tokens, and certificates
- The vendor's recommended sequencing for creation, utilisation, and termination controls across the NHI lifecycle
- A practical argument for when a dedicated NHI platform becomes necessary alongside ASPM and CNAPP
👉 Read Entro Security's analysis of ASPM, CNAPP, and NHI governance →
ASPM, CNAPP and NHIs: where identity governance still breaks?
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25/06/2026 6:31 am
ASPM and CNAPP are posture controls, not identity governance controls. They can show where applications and cloud environments are exposed, but they do not determine whether a service account, token, or certificate should still exist. That distinction matters because many cloud-native risks are caused by durable non-human access rather than software flaws alone. Practitioners should treat posture visibility and identity accountability as separate layers of control.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Systems with least-privileged AI access had a 17% incident rate vs 76% for over-privileged systems, according to the 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
- Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, despite 92% agreeing that governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between posture management and identity governance in cloud security?
A: Posture management shows how secure a workload, application, or environment appears at a point in time. Identity governance decides whether the credentials behind that environment are still justified, properly scoped, and still owned. Both are necessary, but they answer different questions and fail in different ways.
👉 Read our full editorial: ASPM vs CNAPP leaves a gap in NHI governance
