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02/06/2026 7:02 pm
TL;DR: As cloud, SaaS, and hybrid work weaken network boundaries, identity has become the primary security control plane, with risk concentrated in authentication strength, access scope, and monitoring of high-risk entitlements, according to SafePaaS. The governing challenge is no longer access provisioning alone, but continuous exposure management across human and non-human identities.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by SafePaaS: identity security, IAM, and governance across cloud and business applications
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern non-human identities alongside IAM?
A: Security teams should treat non-human identities as first-class governed identities with named ownership, explicit purpose, and defined revocation paths.
Q: Why do service accounts and AI agents create different identity risk than employees?
A: Service accounts and AI agents create different risk because they are not managed through HR lifecycle events, yet they often hold broad technical permissions and can act at machine speed.
Q: How do teams know if identity security controls are actually working?
A: Identity security controls are working when teams can show a current view of high-risk entitlements, detect privilege drift quickly, and remove access before exposure spreads.
Practitioner guidance
- Map identity security to business-critical systems first Start with the applications that can move money, expose regulated data, or change production state.
- Flag toxic access combinations and conflicting roles Define the role and entitlement combinations that break segregation of duties or create unauthorised transaction paths.
- Create explicit governance for non-human identities Assign owners, business purpose, and revocation paths for service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates, and AI agents.
The programme signal is clear: control coverage has to be continuous, risk-based, and anchored in business-critical systems first?
👉 Read SafePaaS's analysis of identity security, IAM, and governance →
Explore further
02/06/2026 7:19 pm
Identity security is now a risk-reduction discipline, not a reporting layer. The article correctly separates identity security from core IAM because the operational problem is no longer just provisioning and authentication. Enterprises need continuous assessment of entitlement risk, toxic combinations, and misuse potential across systems that change faster than review processes. That means the control objective has shifted from compliance evidence to live exposure reduction. Practitioners should treat identity security as an active control plane, not a retrospective audit function.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows why identity security cannot rely on periodic review alone.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should organisations do first when identity risk is growing faster than reviews?
A: Organisations should start by narrowing coverage to a small set of critical systems, then define the highest-risk roles, identities, and entitlement combinations inside them. That creates a practical baseline for monitoring and remediation. Once the risk model is stable, expand to adjacent systems and non-human identities rather than trying to govern everything at once.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity security and IAM: where enterprise risk now concentrates
