Topic starter
22/07/2026 4:35 pm
TL;DR: Enterprises are struggling to secure non-human identities because machine identities are being created inside CI/CD, Kubernetes, SaaS, and AI workflows faster than central IAM can inventory them, and many still keep more access than they need, according to Apono. Static governance is no longer enough; runtime discovery, just-enough access, and time-bound permissions are now the practical baseline.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Apono: “Why 75%+ of Enterprises Admit They Can’t Secure Their Non-Human Identities”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when machine identities are not included in governance reviews?
A: Human-style reviews miss the identities that actually run automation, so orphaned service accounts, overprivileged APIs, and stale certificates remain active outside ownership and expiry controls.
Q: Why do over-scoped service accounts and CI roles increase runtime risk?
A: They increase runtime risk because compromise does not need escalation if the identity already holds broad permissions.
Q: What are the signs that NHI governance is failing in an enterprise?
A: Common warning signs include unclear ownership for service accounts, secrets stored in code or configuration instead of managed vaults, infrequent rotation, and weak offboarding of API keys.
Practitioner guidance
- Implement continuous NHI discovery Inventory service accounts, CI-issued principals, federated trust relationships, and OAuth scopes as live runtime objects rather than periodic records.
- Right-size access to the task Replace broad project or environment scope with permissions matched to a single workflow, dataset, or deployment stage.
- Make time-bound access the default Use just-in-time elevation for machine identities so privileged access exists only during the execution window that requires it.
Bottom line: NHI risk now sits in runtime execution, not just in whether an identity was ever approved or documented.
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This topic was modified 5 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
24/07/2026 4:11 pm
Runtime enforcement is now the correct control boundary for NHI security. Static governance assumes machine identities can be inventoried, reviewed, and re-certified on a human schedule. In cloud-native delivery, that assumption fails because identities are created and exercised inside pipelines, workloads, and automations faster than review cycles can absorb them. The implication is that NHI programmes have to treat issuance, use, and expiry as the real governance boundary.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should teams decide between static role assignment and time-bound access for NHIs?
A: Use static role assignment only for low-risk, stable access that truly needs to persist. If the identity exists to deploy, remediate, or orchestrate a bounded task, time-bound access is the safer default because it limits the inheritance window and forces access to expire with the work, not long after it.
👉 Read our full editorial: NHI security is shifting from governance to runtime enforcement
This post was modified 5 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group