Aviation identity security risks: what IAM teams are missing

TL;DR: Aviation identity security programs often fail because hidden accounts, overlapping access, and incomplete visibility leave critical identities outside governance, according to Hydden. The result is a blind spot that weakens identity security across human, machine, and non-human identity programmes, where control depends on knowing who and what is actually on board.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Hydden: Who's Really on Board? The Hidden Risks of Identity Security in Aviation

By the numbers:

• 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
• 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How do hidden identities weaken IAM and PAM programmes?

A: Hidden identities prevent the programme from knowing which accounts are in scope for review, rotation, or offboarding.

Q: Why do aviation environments amplify identity governance gaps?

A: Aviation environments typically combine operational systems, vendors, contractors, and shared workflows, which increases the chance that access is created outside normal IAM controls.

Q: What do organisations get wrong about identity visibility?

A: They often treat visibility as a reporting problem instead of a governance prerequisite.

Practitioner guidance

• Inventory hidden identity classes first Map service accounts, API keys, shared credentials, vendor access, and delegated operational accounts to named owners and business purposes.
• Reconcile authoritative sources with live access data Compare IAM records, PAM vaults, cloud entitlement exports, and application logs to find identities that exist in one system but not another.
• Bind every identity to an expiry or review event Require time-bounded approval, owner attestation, or explicit service justification for each non-human identity and delegated account.

What's in the full article

Hydden's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• The specific aviation identity visibility gaps Hydden highlights across platforms and access paths
• The product workflow for surfacing hidden identities and mapping them to governance ownership
• The examples Hydden uses to show why pre-built connectors miss part of the identity estate
• The implementation details behind its discovery and observability approach for identity coverage

👉 Read Hydden's post on the hidden risks of identity security in aviation →

Aviation identity security risks: what IAM teams are missing?

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