Topic starter
07/06/2026 8:45 pm
TL;DR: Machine identities now outnumber human users, AI-driven attacks are rising, and identity teams are struggling with complexity across expanding environments, according to Bravura Security’s 2025 IDSA Trends in Identity Security Report. The shift is no longer about user protection alone; identity programmes must govern automated access and machine-level trust assumptions.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Bravura Security: “2025 Identity Security Trends Report”.
By the numbers:
- The report is based on 512 identity and security professionals.
- Which identity controls would have prevented 43 percent of incidents.
Key questions
Q: How can IAM teams bring machine identities into lifecycle governance?
A: Apply the same lifecycle discipline used for human access to service accounts, tokens, cloud services, and AI-connected identities.
Q: Why do machine identities create more risk than human identities in some environments?
A: Machine identities are often numerous, long-lived, and embedded in code or infrastructure.
Q: What are the signs that machine identity governance is no longer keeping up?
A: Common signs include surprise certificate expirations, repeated manual renewals, inconsistent policy enforcement, and teams that cannot answer who owns a given key or trust anchor.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory machine identities as a separate governance domain Map service accounts, tokens, API keys, certificates, and workload credentials separately from human users, then assign ownership and lifecycle status to each.
- Prioritise controls that reduce incident likelihood Use incident data to rank the machine identity controls most likely to prevent compromise, starting with authentication strength, privilege scope, and exposed secrets.
- Tie machine identity ownership to offboarding Require explicit revocation and reassignment when applications, vendors, or environments are retired, so credentials do not outlive the process they support.
Bottom line: Machine identities are no longer a side category in identity security because they now outnumber human users in many enterprise environments.
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This topic was modified 1 day ago by NHI Mgmt Group
08/06/2026 8:25 am
Machine identity has become the primary identity governance surface. Once non-human identities outnumber human users, the programme can no longer treat them as technical leftovers. The governance question shifts to whether ownership, lifecycle, and privilege are defined well enough to survive scale. IAM teams should assume machine identity volume is now a core architectural input, not a clean-up task.
A few things that frame the scale:
- NHIs outnumber human identities by 25x to 50x in modern enterprises, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations prioritise Zero Trust for machine identities before broader IAM changes?
A: Yes, if machine identities are already driving a large share of your access surface. Zero Trust is most useful when it constrains the identities that can move laterally, call services, or carry long-lived privileges. If those identities remain over-privileged or unmanaged, broader IAM improvements will still leave the highest-risk access paths exposed.
👉 Read our full editorial: Machine identities are overtaking human users in identity security
This post was modified 1 day ago by NHI Mgmt Group