Strengthening Access Governance Across Human and Non-Human Identities

Read full article here: https://www.p0.dev/blog/strengthen-access-governance-human-and-nhis/?source=nhimg

With the average cost of a data breach hitting $4.9 million in 2024, organizations face unprecedented pressure to modernize identity and access governance. The rapid expansion of cloud-native environments has rendered traditional, human-centric governance models insufficient. Today, non-human identities (NHIs), service accounts, API keys, workloads, and bots, interact with sensitive systems as frequently, if not more, than human users, creating new and often overlooked attack surfaces.

Why Access-Level Security is Critical

In the modern enterprise, access-level security, defining who or what can access specific systems, data, and resources—serves as the frontline defense against breaches. However, legacy access control models fail in cloud-first infrastructures where NHIs outnumber humans and interact with far more entry points than traditional applications.

Without comprehensive governance over both human and machine identities, organizations risk overprivileged accounts, stale credentials, and unmanaged access paths—prime opportunities for attackers to infiltrate critical infrastructure.

Best Practices for Modern Identity Governance

To protect sensitive assets and maintain operational resilience, organizations should:

1. Discovery & Ownership – Build and maintain an up-to-date inventory of all identities, mapping each NHI to a responsible human owner for accountability.

2. Risk Posture Assessment – Evaluate identities for risk indicators such as inactive service accounts, outdated keys, and excessive privileges.

3. Governance & Lifecycle Management – Assign governance to service owners and enforce workflows for secret rotation, onboarding/offboarding, and continuous risk remediation.

The Payoff of Strong Governance

Effective access governance not only reduces breach risk, but also drives productivity, compliance, and operational efficiency. Securing both human and non-human identities enables organizations to minimize their attack surface, maintain business continuity, and safeguard critical resources against evolving threats.

In the era of cloud-native security, identity governance must evolve from a checkbox exercise to an ongoing, automated practice, one that treats every identity, human or machine, as a first-class security priority.