The Rise of Non-Human Identities: What They Are and How to Secure Them

Read full article here: https://www.oasis.security/blog/what-are-non-human-identities/?utm_source=nhimg

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) have become an essential yet often overlooked component of modern IT ecosystems. As enterprises accelerate cloud adoption, automation, and AI integration, NHIs are proliferating rapidly — now outnumbering human identities by more than 20 to 1, according to recent Enterprise Research Group research. Their numbers are growing at over 20% year-over-year, driven by DevOps pipelines, APIs, workloads, and machine-to-machine integrations.

However, while NHIs drive automation and scalability, they also introduce a new and expanding attack surface. Many organizations struggle to inventory, govern, or secure them — leaving unmanaged machine credentials and tokens that attackers can easily exploit.

This article defines what NHIs are, explores their types and authentication methods, and outlines best practices for managing and securing them in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

What is a Non-Human Identity?

A Non-Human Identity (NHI) is a digital identity used by machines, services, or applications to authenticate and communicate with other systems — whether on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge.

Unlike human identities, which are tied to specific individuals and verified through MFA, SSO, or behavioral analytics, NHIs are autonomous, programmatically created, and authenticated through credentials such as API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens, SSH keys, or X.509 certificates.

These credentials enable automated systems — such as CI/CD pipelines, microservices, or IoT devices — to securely exchange data, access APIs, or perform tasks without human intervention. But because they often operate silently in the background, they are harder to monitor, rotate, and govern.

Examples of Non-Human Identities

1. Service Accounts

Used by applications or systems to interact with databases, APIs, or other services.
Example: A web app using a service account to authenticate against a database or connect to a payment API.

2. API Keys

Enable machine-to-machine authentication between systems, often used by developers, IoT devices, or SaaS integrations.
Example: A third-party analytics tool accessing your cloud service using a static API key.

3. Machine Identities in Cloud Workloads

Represent workloads like VMs, containers, or serverless functions, allowing secure authentication within or across cloud environments.
Fact: The average enterprise has seen machine identities increase from 50,000 in 2021 to over 250,000 in 2025 — a 400% surge.

4. Tokens and Certificates

Short-lived tokens (like OAuth) provide temporary, scoped access, while certificates (like TLS) ensure encrypted, trusted communication between services.
These are essential for maintaining Zero Trust communication across APIs and workloads.

Human Identities vs. Non-Human Identities

Because NHIs lack human-centric security controls such as MFA or behavioral monitoring, a single leaked secret can grant attackers unrestricted access. In the cloud era, where APIs and services are the backbone of automation, identity becomes the new perimeter — and NHIs sit at its core.

Why NHIs are Difficult to Manage

Managing NHIs introduces unique operational and security challenges:

1. Discovery Blind Spots – NHIs are created across multiple environments (cloud, CI/CD, SaaS) with no centralized inventory.
2. Undefined Ownership – Many NHIs are created by developers or automation tools without clear accountability.
3. Lack of Governance – Unlike human identities, NHIs often bypass IAM controls and compliance checks.
4. High Rate of Change – NHIs are frequently created, modified, and deprecated alongside code updates — or sometimes forgotten entirely.
5. Secrets Longevity – Many machine credentials are static or never expire, leaving persistent access paths.
6. Operational Risk – Rotating or revoking NHIs without context can break automation pipelines or disrupt production systems.

How to Manage and Secure Non-Human Identities

Securing NHIs requires visibility, governance, automation, and least-privilege access. Traditional IAM, PAM, and CSPM tools were not designed to handle the dynamic and decentralized nature of NHIs. Instead, organizations need specialized Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) solutions capable of addressing their full lifecycle.

Best Practices

1. Discover and Inventory All NHIs
   Continuously scan cloud, SaaS, and on-prem environments to build a unified catalog of all machine identities.
2. Establish Ownership and Context
   Tag each identity with metadata such as creator, consumer, access scope, and associated resources.
3. Assess and Prioritize Risks
   Identify overprivileged or inactive NHIs and focus remediation on those with the highest exposure.
4. Automate Lifecycle Management
   Integrate creation, rotation, and revocation processes into DevOps pipelines to reduce human error and drift.
5. Enforce Least-Privilege Access
   Limit NHI permissions to the minimum necessary for their specific function, using short-lived credentials where possible.
6. Monitor and Audit Activity
   Continuously track NHI behavior for anomalies, misuse, or dormant credentials that may signal compromise.
7. Educate Developers and Teams
   Promote secure practices around secret management, automation hygiene, and API credential handling.

The Path Forward: Non-Human Identity Management

As automation, AI agents, and autonomous systems become deeply integrated into enterprise operations, the number and complexity of NHIs will continue to surge. Securing these identities is no longer optional — it’s foundational to maintaining trust in digital operations.

Organizations must shift from viewing NHIs as a subset of IAM to treating them as a dedicated identity class, requiring specialized discovery, policy enforcement, and risk mitigation.

Modern solutions now focus on providing continuous visibility, dynamic access control, and automated lifecycle governance for all NHIs — across cloud, SaaS, and hybrid infrastructures.

Key Takeaway

Non-Human Identities are the invisible workforce of the digital enterprise — automating tasks, powering APIs, and enabling cloud-native operations.
But without visibility, governance, and security controls, they become the silent entry points for attackers.
Managing NHIs is not just an IAM challenge — it’s a foundational layer of cybersecurity resilience in the era of machine-to-machine communication.