Top 10 FAQs about Non-Human Identities

Read full article here: https://www.oasis.security/blog/top-10-questions-about-non-human-identities-nhis-answered?source=nhimg

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) like API keys, service accounts, and automation tokens have quietly become the largest and most overlooked attack surface in modern enterprises. As automation, cloud, and AI adoption accelerates, NHIs now outnumber human identities by over 20:1, yet most organizations still struggle with visibility, governance, and security.

In this article, we answer the Top 10 most common questions security teams have about NHIs:

1. What are NHIs and why are they critical? — Machine-based identities that enable automation, integrations, and cloud operations.

2. Examples of NHIs? — API keys, service accounts, OAuth apps, storage tokens, and more.

3. Why are NHIs different from human identities? — They lack clear ownership, centralized management, and don’t support MFA or SSO.

4. What makes managing NHIs so challenging? — Rapid sprawl, fragmented visibility, manual processes, and high privilege exposure.

5. Why is NHI security now a board-level priority? — Breaches like Microsoft’s AI storage leak and CircleCI’s OAuth compromise show the real-world risks.

6. How can organizations manage NHIs effectively? — Through automated discovery, governance, lifecycle management, and continuous monitoring.

7. Best practices for securing NHIs? — Least privilege enforcement, secrets rotation, auditing, anomaly detection, and automation.

8. Risks of unmanaged NHIs? — Data breaches, lateral movement, compliance violations, and operational disruptions.

9. NHIs and Zero Trust? — NHIs must be treated as a core component of Zero Trust frameworks, requiring continuous verification.

10. What tools help manage NHIs? — Purpose-built platforms like Oasis Security provide discovery, orchestration, monitoring, and integrations with existing IAM and SIEM systems.

Bonus Insight:
Understand the difference between Machine Identities (devices, servers) and Workload Identities (applications, services)—both critical subsets of NHIs requiring specialized security controls.