Reducing the NHI Attack Surface: 6 Use Cases Solved

Read full article here: https://www.britive.com/resource/blog/securing-non-human-identities-6-use-cases/?source=nhimg

In today’s cloud-first, automation-driven enterprise, over 90% of identities in the cloud are non-human identities (NHIs) — machine accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, service accounts, bots, workloads, and scripts. These identities are mission-critical for automation, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, AI/ML workflows, and data access, yet they are often over-provisioned, static, and poorly governed, creating a massive unseen attack surface.

This article showcases six real-world scenarios where Britive’s dynamic authorization platform secures NHIs using Just-In-Time (JIT) ephemeral access, task-specific privileges, and robust audit trails — preventing credential misuse, meeting regulatory requirements, and reducing cyber insurance risk.

The NHI Risk Landscape

• Static credentials persist long after use, increasing exposure.

• Over-privileged access violates the principle of least privilege.

• Credential leakage enables lateral movement in the cloud.

• Multi-cloud complexity amplifies misconfigurations and compliance risks.

Britive in Action: 6 Use Cases

1. GitHub CI/CD Pipeline Automation

   • Risk without Britive: Static API keys stored in GitHub Secrets grant persistent AWS database access.

   • With Britive: JIT ephemeral API keys scoped to AWS RDS deployment tasks, expiring immediately after use.

2. RPA Invoice Processing

   • Risk without Britive: Static credentials in bot configs provide broad ERP database access.

   • With Britive: Ephemeral read-only API keys for specific tables, expiring post-task to enforce least privilege.

3. Azure Loan Approval with Fraud Detection

   • Risk without Britive: Long-lived client secrets in Azure Logic Apps expose financial and personal data.

   • With Britive: JIT service principal tokens scoped to Azure SQL tables and fraud APIs, with instant expiry.

4. Insurance Claim Processing

   • Risk without Britive: Static credentials in Azure Functions allow broad customer data access.

   • With Britive: Ephemeral credentials with container-level access controls in Blob Storage and fraud APIs.

5. Hybrid Cloud Healthcare Data Processing (Azure & AWS)

   • Risk without Britive: Secrets in Logic Apps and Lambda expose HIPAA-regulated patient data.

   • With Britive: JIT tokens scoped to healthcare data containers and billing buckets, expiring post-use.

6. Automated Threat Detection & Remediation with CSPM + Britive

   • Risk without Britive: Persistent IAM keys in SOAR tools allow broad S3 bucket access.

   • With Britive: JIT credentials scoped to the specific misconfigured bucket, automatically revoked after remediation.

Benefits of Britive’s Approach

• Zero Trust NHI Governance – Every non-human identity request is verified and scoped to task-specific needs.

• Ephemeral, Least-Privilege Access – No standing credentials; all access is temporary and minimized.

• Multi-Cloud Scalability – Consistent policy enforcement across AWS, Azure, GCP, and SaaS.

• Regulatory Compliance – Supports HIPAA, GDPR, SOX, and PCI DSS with built-in auditing.

• Reduced Cyber Insurance Premiums – Minimizes credential exposure risk profile.

Bottom Line:

In a threat landscape where attackers increasingly target NHIs to infiltrate cloud infrastructure, Britive’s unified, dynamic authorization platform provides the automation, fine-grained access control, and auditability needed to secure machine identities at enterprise scale — without slowing down business operations.