How NHIs Are Quietly Breaking Your Compliance Strategy?

Read the full article here: https://entro.security/blog/the-compliance-black-hole-how-non-human-identities-break-the-rules/?source=nhimg.org

Every major compliance framework—from PCI DSS and SOC 2 to GDPR and NIS2—demands visibility, accountability, and control. Yet in most organizations, Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are quietly operating beyond those controls.

These NHIs like service accounts, API keys, third-party integrations, and OAuth tokens are the invisible actors driving automation and modern cloud-native infrastructure. But they’re also creating silent gaps in compliance that many security teams are only now discovering.

NHIs: The Silent Compliance Risk

In today’s enterprise, NHIs outnumber human users 92 to 1. That means most access to your systems, APIs, and data is happening through identities you can’t see, don’t manage well, and can’t easily audit.

And that’s exactly where compliance breaks down:

• Visibility gaps – You can’t secure or audit what you can’t see.

• Orphaned identities – Many NHIs lack ownership, violating GDPR and ISO 27001.

• Stale secrets – Long-lived credentials often go unrotated for months.

• Zero monitoring – NHIs often bypass the alerts and oversight applied to human users.

Even mature compliance programs rarely treat NHIs with the same rigor as human identities—and that’s the problem.

OWASP’s Wake-Up Call: NHIs Are the New Compliance Battleground

The new OWASP Top 10 for Non-Human Identity Security (NHIS) highlights just how deep the compliance gaps go. A few examples:

• NHIS-SEC-01: No inventory of NHIs → Breaches ISO 27001 asset control mandates

• NHIS-SEC-06: Over-permissioned NHIs → Violates least-privilege in PCI DSS & GDPR

• NHIS-SEC-08: Secrets exposure → Contradicts HIPAA data protection standards

• NHIS-SEC-10: No access management → Undermines SOC 2 & NIS2 control requirements

The takeaway? If you’re not managing NHIs explicitly, you’re not compliant.

The Three Pillars of NHI Compliance

To close the gap, organizations need a clear strategy centered on these three pillars:

1. Comprehensive Discovery - Automatically map every NHI—API keys, tokens, service accounts, AI agents—and track usage, permissions, and owners.

2. Lifecycle Governance - Enforce regular rotation, expiration, and revocation of credentials. Audit access regularly and kill stale identities.

3. Continuous Monitoring & Response - Watch NHI behavior in real time. Detect misuse. Investigate anomalies. Respond fast when something looks off.

How Entro Bridges the Gap

Entro’s NHI & Secrets Security platform uniquely addresses these challenges, aligning to OWASP and the major compliance frameworks:

• Automated NHI Inventory: Continuous detection and contextual mapping of every secret, token and service account

• Proactive Governance: Real-time visibility into secret rotation status, owner attribution, and privilege escalation

• Continuous Compliance Alignment: Built-in mappings to PCI DSS, ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and NIS2
  
• Real-Time Detection & Response: NHIDR™ provides proactive detection of suspicious NHI behaviors and immediate response capabilities