How to Decommission Orphaned and Stale Non-Human Identities

Read full article here: https://www.oasis.security/blog/decommissioning-orphaned-and-stale-non-human-identities/source=nhimg

Unmanaged non-human identities (NHIs) pose a significant security risk in today’s digital landscape. Unlike human accounts, NHIs often operate outside traditional IT security reviews, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. A common finding during security assessments is the presence of stale or orphaned NHIs that should have been decommissioned but remain active with permissions intact.

What Are Orphaned and Stale NHIs?

An orphaned NHI is an identity that is no longer in use but still enabled and holding active permissions. These accounts often appear as the unintended result of:

• Ending work with third-party vendors
• Organizational changes, such as employee departures or role changes
• Technology shifts, like replacing or retiring an application

For example, we frequently see stale NHIs from discontinued SaaS applications used for one-time tasks such as data migration. Once the task ends, these accounts are forgotten, left lingering in the environment without proper offboarding. In today’s fast-moving business environment, this oversight is common when organizations lack strong visibility and operational processes.

Why Orphaned NHIs Are Dangerous

Stale and orphaned NHIs expand the attack surface, creating hidden backdoors that may persist undetected for months or even years. Incidents like the recent Cloudflare breach demonstrate how unused NHIs that weren’t decommissioned became entry points for attackers.

Unmanaged identities resemble vulnerabilities in the software supply chain: attackers exploit overlooked connections and permissions in trusted environments to gain unauthorized access. Over time, the accumulation of these dormant identities needlessly increases organizational risk.

Challenges with Decommissioning NHIs

Offboarding NHIs is notoriously complex and error-prone without the right tools. The biggest challenges include:

1. Lack of visibility – “We don’t know which NHIs are unused.”
2. Operational risk – “We don’t know what this NHI does and removing it might break something.”
3. Ambiguous ownership – No clear accountability for non-human accounts.
4. Complex ecosystems – Interconnected apps and services make dependency mapping difficult.

Unlike human accounts, NHIs don’t follow predictable onboarding and offboarding cycles. They often run in the background, excluding identity containment tools, making it difficult to determine if they’re still active or needed.

Why Manual Approaches Fail

The large scale and dynamic nature of NHIs make it nearly impossible to manage them manually. Accurate decommissioning requires contextual information about ownership, usage, and dependencies to avoid business disruption. Without automation, teams rely on spreadsheets, manual triage, and fragmented processes, leading to inaction and accumulated security debt.

How to Decommission NHIs Safely

Organizations can reduce risk and strengthen security by adopting a proactive approach:

• Conduct regular reviews of NHIs and revoke unused permissions
• Establish ownership and accountability for every identity
• Leverage monitoring and analytics to identify stale or orphaned NHIs
• Adopt automation and contextual intelligence to offboard securely

The Role of Automation

Oasis Security provide automated, continuous inventory of NHIs with detailed contextual data, enabling risk-based prioritization. For example, Oasis evaluates usage patterns before flagging an NHI as stale, ensuring that decommissioning won’t disrupt operations. By focusing first on the highest-risk NHIs, those with privileged, sensitive, or external access, organizations can minimize risk efficiently while maintaining business continuity.

Strengthening Your Security Posture

By investing in non-human identity governance and lifecycle management, organizations can:

• Shrink their attack surface
• Prevent overlooked backdoors
• Safeguard sensitive data
• Meet regulatory compliance requirements

In an era of complex, interconnected environments, decommissioning orphaned and stale NHIs is no longer optional. It’s a critical step in reducing risk and building resilient identity security.