The Blind Spot in NHI Security: Connecting to Systems Everyone Else Can’t See

Read full article here: https://www.token.security/blog/why-full-non-human-identity-coverage-requires-connecting-to-systems-everyone-else-cant-see/?utm_source=nhimg

When it comes to identity security, there’s a fundamental difference between human and Non-Human Identity (NHI) infrastructure and it’s a difference that most organizations overlook.

Human identity was relatively straightforward to centralize. Over the past two decades, solutions like Active Directory, Okta, and Google Workspace consolidated user management and made single sign-on (SSO) the norm. Human access follows predictable patterns: employees log in, access a handful of approved apps, and leave an audit trail.

Non-human identity never had that luxury.

Instead of consolidating, NHIs fragmented across every corner of modern infrastructure. Each system, databases, workloads, CI/CD pipelines, API clients, servers—introduced its own secrets model, identity silo, and authentication method. And the most difficult cases aren’t cloud-native at all. They live in the places most vendors can’t reach:

• On-premises Active Directory
• Air-gapped networks
• Self-hosted databases like Postgres or Oracle
• Regulated environments like healthcare Snowflake instances disconnected from the public internet

These are not rare exceptions. They are core business systems, and for many enterprises, they are invisible blind spots in NHI security.

The Blind Spot No One Talks About

Most modern security platforms were built with SaaS-first assumptions: API-driven, internet-accessible, agentless. That’s fine for part of the environment but not for everything.

What happens when the most sensitive workloads sit behind private subnets, in data centers, or in networks deliberately walled off from the internet?

This is where traditional agentless platforms fail. They can’t reach the NHIs that matter most, which means organizations are left with critical gaps in visibility and control.

Reaching the “Unreachable”

At Token Security, we designed a different approach: a lightweight, container-based reverse proxy that makes these systems visible without introducing new attack surfaces or breaking compliance.

How it works:

1. A Token Security proxy agent is deployed inside your private network (runs on Docker, Kubernetes, or any standard environment).
2. The proxy establishes a mutual TLS–encrypted outbound tunnel back to the Token platform, based on the Fast Reverse Proxy open-source project.
3. Once connected, Token Security can securely query internal services as if local, without requiring inbound connections or major architectural changes.

This capability brings air-gapped and legacy systems into the same NHI security fabric as modern cloud services.

Real-World Impact

This isn’t theory, customers are using it today:

• Federal Healthcare Provider – Needed visibility into service accounts accessing a Snowflake environment disconnected from the internet for HIPAA compliance. The proxy allowed monitoring without breaking regulatory boundaries.
• Global Telecom – Runs a sprawling, on-prem Active Directory. Token Security enabled full visibility into service accounts and configurations across disconnected infrastructure.
• Software Enterprises – Still rely on self-hosted databases like Postgres running in private VMs. With the proxy, unmanaged credentials in those systems became visible and governable for the first time.

Why It Matters for NHI Security

These systems aren’t edge cases, they are where your most sensitive data and workloads live. Ignoring them means leaving NHIs unsecured where attackers know to look.

Our approach provides:

• End-to-end NHI coverage across cloud and self-hosted environments
• Visibility into systems invisible to agentless tools
• Security without internet exposure or architectural concessions

In today’s reality of hybrid networks, legacy infrastructure, and compliance-driven isolation, securing NHIs requires connecting to the systems no one else can see.

Bottom line

If your security program only covers SaaS and cloud-native identities, you’re only solving half the problem. True NHI visibility means reaching into the dark corners of your infrastructure—and doing it securely.