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24/06/2026 11:22 pm
TL;DR: Identity and access management tools are being pushed beyond human sign-in into CI/CD pipelines, service accounts, tokens, and AI-powered agents, with Apono citing 78% of organisations planning to increase IAM spending because identity-based attacks drive phishing and lateral movement. The real challenge is no longer authentication alone but governing standing privilege across human and non-human identities before cloud sprawl turns access into exposure.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Apono: Top 10 Identity and Access Management Tools
By the numbers:
- 78% of organizations plan to ramp up spending on identity and access management tools to ease concerns over identity-based attacks that lead to phishing and lateral movement.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern non-human identities in cloud environments?
A: Security teams should govern non-human identities through the same lifecycle discipline they apply to people, but with controls designed for machine speed and scale.
Q: Why do service accounts and API keys create more risk than human accounts in practice?
A: Service accounts and API keys often create more risk because they are reused across systems, embedded in code or pipelines, and left active long after the original use case changes.
Q: What breaks when JIT access is layered on top of poor entitlement hygiene?
A: JIT access breaks down when the underlying entitlements are already excessive, unclear, or poorly owned.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every privileged identity class Inventory human admins, service accounts, CI/CD runners, API tokens, certificates, and AI-powered agents in one access catalogue so governance does not stop at employee accounts.
- Replace standing elevation with task-scoped access Use JIT for administration, break-glass, and high-risk SaaS access so elevated permissions exist only for the task and expire automatically when the task closes.
- Tie secrets discovery to revocation workflows Do not stop at finding exposed keys in code, config, or CI/CD.
What's in the full article
Apono's full post covers the product-specific detail this analysis intentionally leaves for the source:
- Side-by-side descriptions of the IAM tools the vendor included in its ranking and how it positions each category
- The specific feature list, pricing notes, and best-for guidance attached to each product entry
- Apono's own implementation framing for JIT and JEP access across cloud, database, and internal tools
- The review excerpts and summary table used to support the vendor's comparison narrative
👉 Read Apono's guide to the top IAM tools and NHI governance features →
IAM tools and NHI sprawl: what practitioners need to know?
Explore further
25/06/2026 8:12 am
Identity sprawl is now an access governance problem, not an inventory problem. As cloud estates grow, the number of subjects asking for access expands from people to pipelines, tokens, workloads, and AI-powered agents. That changes the job of IAM tools from authenticating users to governing distributed privilege across heterogeneous execution contexts. Practitioners should stop treating identity as a directory issue and start treating it as a runtime control plane problem.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 64% of valid secrets leaked in 2022 are still valid and exploitable today, proving that detection alone is not enough without automated revocation, according to The State of Secrets Sprawl 2026.
- Our research also found that 92% of organisations expose NHIs to third parties, which turns partner access into a persistent governance problem rather than a one-time trust decision.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do teams know if their IAM programme is actually reducing identity risk?
A: Teams know IAM is reducing risk when they can show fewer standing privileges, shorter access duration, faster revocation, and fewer credentials stored in code or shared systems. The strongest indicator is not more approvals, but less permanent access and cleaner ownership across human and non-human identities. If privileges still outlive the work, the programme is not yet effective.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity and access management tools now must govern NHIs
