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24/06/2026 3:04 pm
TL;DR: ISO 27001 links access control, cryptographic controls, operational security, supplier relationships, and incident management to non-human identities such as service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates, and automation tools, according to Entro Security. The governance gap is that machine identities are often over-privileged, long-lived, and under-monitored, so compliance depends on treating them as first-class identities rather than edge cases.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Entro Security: Securing NHIs and ISO 27001 Compliance, The Critical Link for Protecting Your Organization's Information
By the numbers:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities - 46% confirmed, 26% suspected.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern non-human identities for ISO 27001 compliance?
A: Treat NHIs as governed identities, not technical leftovers.
Q: Why do service accounts and API keys create ISO 27001 audit risk?
A: They create audit risk when their permissions are broader than the workflow they support or when no one can explain why the identity still exists.
Q: What breaks when non-human identities are not monitored and reviewed?
A: Detection, accountability, and incident response all weaken at the same time.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every non-human identity Build a complete register of service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates, and automation identities, including ownership, purpose, and expiry conditions.
- Bind each NHI to least privilege and a named owner Require a business owner, task scope, and access ceiling for every machine identity before it is approved for use.
- Move secrets into managed vaults Remove credentials from code, configuration files, and shared pipelines, then enforce retrieval through a controlled vault path.
What's in the full article
Entro Security's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- How Entro maps ISO 27001 control areas to specific NHI practices such as access control, logging, and supplier management.
- The article's step-by-step framing for securing service accounts, API keys, tokens, and certificates in line with the standard.
- Additional implementation context for vaulting, rotation, and audit evidence that practitioners can use when building an ISMS.
- The source's own walkthrough of why NHI governance supports incident handling and post-incident review.
👉 Read Entro Security's analysis of NHIs and ISO 27001 compliance →
ISO 27001 and NHIs: what IAM teams need to tighten?
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25/06/2026 2:13 am
ISO 27001 does not stop at human access, and neither should identity governance. The standard's access, cryptographic, supplier, and incident controls all assume that every credentialed actor is accounted for. When NHIs are treated as operational leftovers instead of governed identities, the ISMS loses coverage exactly where automation concentrates risk. Practitioners should read ISO 27001 as an NHI governance test, not just a policy exercise.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, 46% confirmed and 26% suspected, according to the 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- Enterprises that have experienced a compromised NHI averaged 2.7 separate incidents in the past 12 months, according to the same report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do organisations reduce risk from third-party machine identities?
A: They should treat supplier-connected credentials as part of the same identity governance model as internal NHIs. That means limiting access to the minimum required, rotating secrets, reviewing logs, and confirming that the vendor relationship still justifies the access. Supplier access is only low risk when it is actively governed.
👉 Read our full editorial: Securing NHIs for ISO 27001 compliance: the control gap
