Best Practices for Enhancing Cybersecurity Through Non-Human Identity Management

Read full article here: https://natoma.ai/blog/enhancing-cybersecurity-with-non-human-identity-management-best-practices/?utm_source=nhimg

In the digital age, cybersecurity is a top priority for organizations worldwide. While human identity management has matured over decades, Non-Human Identities (NHIs) remain one of the most overlooked yet critical areas of enterprise security. These digital entities operate silently in the background, authenticating, authorizing, and executing workloads at machine speed. Without effective governance, NHIs become high-value targets for attackers and a major source of risk.

This article explores the types of NHIs, the risks they pose, and the best practices organizations can implement to manage them effectively.

Types of Non-Human Identities

NHIs encompass a diverse set of digital credentials used to automate operations and enable secure interactions across IT environments. Key examples include:

• Service Accounts / Application Accounts - Accounts used by applications and services to run automated tasks, integrate systems, and generate API keys or OAuth connections.
• API Keys - Unique credentials that enable secure communication and data exchange between software components.
• OAuth Tokens - Used in delegated access scenarios, allowing applications to securely access resources without exposing user credentials.
• Certificates - Digital certificates authenticate workloads, services, or devices, ensuring secure communication.
• Secrets / Keys - Confidential strings such as access keys or shared tokens that provide authentication to storage systems and APIs.

Each type of NHI has distinct use cases, but all require strong lifecycle management to avoid becoming a security liability.

Risks Associated with Non-Human Identities

While NHIs drive automation and efficiency, they also introduce significant risks when unmanaged. Common challenges include:

• Unauthorized Access - Compromised NHIs often hold elevated privileges, giving attackers direct access to critical systems and sensitive data.
• Lateral Movement - NHIs are frequently exploited in lateral movement attacks, serving as stealthy pathways for adversaries once inside a network.
• Operational Disruption - A single compromised NHI can disrupt business operations, trigger downtime, and cause reputational and financial damage.

Best Practices for Securing NHIs

A strong NHI management program must go beyond discovery—it must establish continuous governance and control. Recommended practices include:

1. Comprehensive Visibility - Discover and inventory all NHIs across environments. Visibility should extend beyond just credentials to include context such as ownership, last rotation, and access scope.

2. Policy Enforcement - Establish policies for secure creation, rotation, and decommissioning of NHIs. Enforce least privilege by aligning access rights with functional requirements.

3. Regular Security Audits - Conduct audits to validate compliance with policies, detect orphaned accounts, and identify over-permissioned or unnecessary NHIs.

4. Credential Lifecycle Automation - Automate credential rotation and expiration to eliminate hardcoded, long-lived secrets. Automation ensures security without creating operational downtime.

5. Continuous Monitoring - Monitor NHI usage patterns for anomalies such as unusual access times, privilege escalations, or geographic inconsistencies.

Natoma’s Role in NHI Management

Natoma provides a purpose-built platform for Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM), delivering centralized oversight and lifecycle control. Key capabilities include:

• Automated Discovery & Ownership Assignment- Ensures no orphaned or unmanaged NHIs remain.
• Seamless Credential Rotation - Automates key rotation without causing downstream failures or downtime.
• Advanced ML-Based Differentiation - Distinguishes between human and non-human activity with precision.
• Lifecycle Governance - Supports provisioning, owner reassignment, and deprovisioning across the entire NHI ecosystem.
• Continuous Threat Detection - Monitors NHI behavior in real time, triggering alerts and remediation workflows for anomalies.

By embedding security directly into NHI management, Natoma helps organizations reduce risk, strengthen compliance, and improve resilience.

Benefits of Modern NHI Platforms

Platforms like Natoma offer measurable advantages for enterprises:

• Advanced Threat Detection through behavior analytics and machine learning.
• Streamlined Compliance with audit-ready visibility and reporting.
• Operational Efficiency via automation that reduces manual workload on security teams.
• Business Continuity by ensuring NHI risks are mitigated without slowing down innovation.

Conclusion

Non-Human Identities are now at the heart of modern infrastructure, cloud, and AI-driven environments. Left unmanaged, they pose one of the largest and most dangerous attack surfaces. By implementing visibility, governance, lifecycle automation, and continuous monitoring, organizations can secure NHIs with the same rigor applied to human identities.

Solutions like Natoma’s NHI platform make this not only possible but practical, enabling enterprises to protect critical assets while maintaining agility in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Cybersecurity resilience starts with securing every identity, human and non-human alike.