Topic starter
06/06/2026 1:53 am
TL;DR: Non-human identities are multiplying across cloud, SaaS, DevOps, AI, and third-party integrations, yet many organisations still lack visibility, ownership, and lifecycle control, according to Oasis Security. The real issue is not just secret sprawl but governance built for identities that are easier to inventory than machine accounts with on-demand creation and hidden dependencies.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Oasis Security: “Breaking Down Non Human Identity Security: 5 Critical Challenges in 2025”.
By the numbers:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when organisations cannot see their non-human identities?
A: When NHIs are invisible, least privilege, credential rotation, and access review all become incomplete.
Q: Why do service accounts create more governance risk than many IAM teams expect?
A: Service accounts often persist longer than the systems and teams that created them, which makes ownership and review harder over time.
Q: When should security teams remove or rotate NHI credentials?
A: Remove or rotate credentials when the workflow changes, the owner changes, the identity is no longer needed, or the access cannot be justified.
Practitioner guidance
- Implement continuous NHI discovery Scan cloud, SaaS and DevOps environments for service accounts, API keys and automation identities that were never registered centrally.
- Map every hidden dependency before revocation Document the consumers, workflows and downstream systems that rely on each non-human identity before changing access or deleting it.
- Assign ownership and expiry dates to all machine identities Make every service account, token and key accountable to a named owner with a review date and removal trigger.
Bottom line: The core problem is not simply secret sprawl but weak governance over machine identities that are created, used and abandoned across cloud, SaaS, DevOps and AI workflows.
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This topic was modified 1 day ago by NHI Mgmt Group
06/06/2026 3:15 am
Non-human identity visibility is now a baseline governance requirement, not an inventory project. If an organisation cannot reliably enumerate service accounts, API keys and automation identities, it cannot prove ownership or control. The problem is not just secret sprawl but the absence of a defensible system of record. Practitioners should treat discovery as an ongoing control, not a one-time clean-up exercise.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 80% of identity breaches involved compromised non-human identities such as service accounts and API keys, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between NHI visibility and NHI governance?
A: Visibility shows what identities exist, where they live, and how they behave. Governance adds ownership, policy, remediation, and accountability. A team can have dashboards without control, but it cannot govern identities effectively without a trusted inventory and a way to act on what it finds.
👉 Read our full editorial: Non-human identity security in 2025 is a visibility and governance gap
This post was modified 1 day ago by NHI Mgmt Group