Machine identities vs human users: what IAM teams need to know

TL;DR: The 2025 IDSA Trends in Identity Security Report says machine identities now outnumber human users, AI-driven attacks are rising, and 512 identity and security professionals were surveyed to benchmark what is working and where control gaps persist. The real shift is that identity programmes must govern automated and machine-based access, not just users.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Bravura Security: the 2025 IDSA Trends in Identity Security Report

By the numbers:

• The report benchmarks responses from 512 identity and security professionals.
• The report says 43 percent of incidents could have been prevented by specific identity controls.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams govern machine identities at enterprise scale?

A: Start with discovery, ownership, and lifecycle control.

Q: Why do machine identities increase identity risk compared with human accounts?

A: Machine identities increase risk because they are numerous, long-lived, and often embedded in applications or pipelines where they are hard to see.

Q: What do teams get wrong when reviewing non-human access?

A: The most common mistake is using human-centric review processes for machine identities.

Practitioner guidance

• Inventory machine identities by owner and use case Build a living register of service accounts, API keys, tokens, and certificates with business owner, technical owner, system dependency, and renewal path.
• Reduce long-lived credential exposure Prioritise the identities most likely to be copied into code, config files, and automation jobs, then move them into managed secrets workflows with explicit rotation and expiry.
• Rework recertification for non-human access Do not reuse human access review templates for machine accounts.

What's in the full report

Bravura Security's full report covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Survey cuts that show where identity leaders are planning to invest in 2025 and beyond.
• The underlying charts behind the 512-professional benchmark and the control themes respondents prioritised.
• The report's fuller breakdown of which identity controls would have prevented 43 percent of incidents.
• The practical data behind what practitioners said is slowing identity teams down operationally.

👉 Read Bravura Security's 2025 identity security trends report →

Machine identities vs human users: what IAM teams need to know?

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