Is NHI Remediation Really That Hard?

Read the full article here: https://www.token.security/blog/why-remediation-is-the-hardest-problem-in-nhi-security?source=nhimg.org

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) now outnumber people in enterprise systems by 45:1—and they’re only growing with the rise of Agentic AI. From CI/CD pipelines to service accounts and cloud workloads, NHIs keep everything running. But they also pose a unique problem: how do you fix NHI risks without breaking production?

That’s the remediation dilemma, and it’s the hardest part of NHI security.

Why It’s So Difficult?

NHIs are fragile by design. They’re deeply woven into systems, scripts, and workflows. Accidentally revoking an over-permissioned identity or rotating the wrong secret can shut down apps, fail deployments, or kill data flows. So even when the risk is obvious, teams often don’t touch it—the fear of breaking things stops them cold.

Legacy IAM and PAM tools don’t help much. They weren’t built for NHIs. They can’t answer critical questions like:

• Who provisioned this identity?

• What’s using it right now?

• What breaks if I disable it?

That leaves security teams stuck with risks they can’t fix confidently.

The Token Security Fix: Remediation You Can Trust

Token Security tackles this challenge by treating NHI security as a big data problem. Their platform maps the full NHI Risk Graph™, connecting:

• Where the identity came from

• Who owns it

• What permissions it has

• How it’s used in real time

• Where it shows up in code

• What will break if changed

With this context, teams can fix safely, automatically, and without fear:

• Rotate keys securely

• Revoke unused access

• Offboard stale identities

• Apply least privilege at scale

AI-powered remediation plans and automated hygiene policies mean no more guesswork—just confident action.