Exposed NHI response gaps: what IAM teams should fix now

TL;DR: Exposed secrets, API keys, and certificates are a recurring incident driver, and Entro Security frames incident response around detecting, containing, eradicating, and recovering from those exposures while citing a 72% rise in data breaches from 2021 to 2023 and 35% of malware delivered by email. The real issue is that incident response plans still assume identity exposure is a rare event, not a routine operational condition.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Entro Security: Building a cybersecurity incident response plan, step by step

By the numbers:

• 2023 saw a 72% increase in data breaches compared to 2021.
• Around 35% of malware was delivered through email in 2023.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams respond when an NHI secret is exposed?

A: Treat the exposure as an active identity incident, not a housekeeping issue.

Q: Why do exposed API keys and tokens create such high risk?

A: Because they bypass normal authentication once discovered.

Q: What do organisations get wrong about incident response for non-human identities?

A: They often separate incident response from identity governance.

Practitioner guidance

• Map every exposed-secret response path to an owner Assign named ownership for detection, revocation, workload validation, and stakeholder notification before an incident happens.
• Build secret exposure into incident triage logic Treat leaked API keys, tokens, and certificates as active incidents even when there is no confirmed abuse.
• Pre-stage revocation and rotation runbooks Document the exact steps to revoke or rotate cloud secrets, then test them against the services that rely on those credentials.

What's in the full article

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

• Step-by-step incident response workflow for exposed secrets, from detection through recovery
• Examples of the tools Entro says help surface exposed NHIs in cloud storage and code
• A full walkthrough of the hypothetical AWS S3 bucket exposure scenario and the response sequence
• Guidance on how to revise CSIRP documentation after a secret exposure event

👉 Read Entro Security's step-by-step guide to incident response for exposed NHIs →

Exposed NHI response gaps: what IAM teams should fix now?

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