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03/06/2026 7:26 pm
TL;DR: Non-human identities now account for a growing share of enterprise access, and 54% of executives say inappropriate NHI access rights have already caused security issues, according to Entro Security. The real problem is that human IAM assumptions do not hold for API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens, and machine identities that operate outside human-paced review cycles.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Entro Security: Difference between non-human and human identities, and the challenges they pose
By the numbers:
- 54% of executives have reported that inappropriate access rights granted to non-human identities have led to security issues.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
- 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern non-human identities differently from human accounts?
A: Security teams should govern non-human identities with separate lifecycle, inventory, and rotation controls because these identities authenticate silently, operate continuously, and often outlive the systems that created them.
Q: Why do service accounts create more access risk than many human accounts?
A: Service accounts often carry persistent, broad permissions so applications keep working without interruption.
Q: What breaks when organisations cannot see all of their non-human identities?
A: What breaks is governance itself.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every non-human identity class Build a consolidated register for service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, certificates, and workload identities.
- Separate human and NHI review workflows Do not route machine access through human recertification alone.
- Enforce secret rotation and offboarding by policy Tie rotation and revocation to lifecycle events, code changes, and owner departure.
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 guidance on identifying human versus non-human identities across common enterprise systems
- Practical examples of NHI controls for secrets management, access policies, and automation
- Lifecycle best practices for onboarding, monitoring, and retiring machine identities
- The vendor's recommended approach to building a more secure identity management strategy
👉 Read Entro Security's blog on human and non-human identity challenges →
Human vs non-human identities: where IAM controls diverge?
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03/06/2026 7:29 pm
Human IAM and NHI governance solve different problems, even when they share the same identity platform. Human identity controls assume interactive authentication, predictable review cycles, and a person behind every access decision. NHI governance has to manage credentials that authenticate silently, live in code, and persist beyond the original owner. The practitioner mistake is to treat workload identities as scaled-down user accounts. The implication is that programmes need separate control logic for human and non-human access, even if reporting is unified.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 71% of NHIs are not rotated within recommended time frames, increasing the risk of compromise over time.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can teams reduce risk from long-lived machine credentials?
A: Teams should tie credential rotation and revocation to lifecycle events, then verify usage against current workload behaviour rather than historic provisioning records. If a secret is still active after the workload changes, the programme has an unmanaged access problem. The NHI Lifecycle Management Guide is the right reference point for formalising that discipline.
👉 Read our full editorial: Human and non-human identities need different control models
