Top 5 FAQs About Non-Human Identities

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Shedding Light on NHIs

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are now at the center of enterprise security conversations, but for many, they remain misunderstood and overlooked. These digital gatekeepers silently authenticate, authorize, and automate interactions across modern IT environments. Yet, without proper governance, they become one of the largest attack surfaces in any organization.

This article addresses the top five questions about NHIs and why securing them is mission-critical.

1-What Are Non-Human Identities?

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are digital credentials assigned to machines, applications, services, and processes, not people. They include service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates, and service principals.

Their purpose is to enable automated, machine-to-machine (M2M) operations that keep modern businesses running, whether that’s an app connecting to a database, a CI/CD pipeline deploying code, or a cloud workload pulling secrets from a vault.

With NHIs outnumbering human accounts by up to 50:1, full visibility and control over them is no longer optional, it’s foundational.

2-What Is Identity Management, and How Does It Apply to NHIs?

Traditional identity management focuses on humans: onboarding, role changes, and offboarding. NHIs don’t follow this lifecycle. They are created automatically, scale dynamically across environments, and often persist without oversight.

NHI identity management extends the principles of IAM to machines by:

• Tracking their creation and purpose.
• Enforcing least-privilege access to data and services.
• Governing their lifecycle (creation, rotation, decommissioning).

In other words, NHIs need to be treated as first-class citizens in your identity fabric—not as an afterthought.

3-Why Are NHIs So Important (and Risky) in Today’s Security Landscape?

NHIs have become prime targets for attackers because:

• They hold high-value privileges.
• They don’t support MFA or biometrics.
• They’re often long-lived and hardcoded.

A single compromised NHI can provide attackers with persistent, stealthy access to sensitive systems—far more damaging than a typical user account breach.

With regulators increasing scrutiny and attackers actively exploiting NHI blind spots, securing these identities must be a top priority for every organization.

4-How Does Natoma Help Manage NHIs?

Natoma approaches NHI management through a “single pane of glass”, centralizing discovery, governance, and control.

Key capabilities include:

• Visibility: Automated discovery and inventory of all NHIs across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem.
• Control: Policy-based lifecycle management (provisioning, rotation, retirement).
• Risk Reduction: Continuous monitoring to detect unused, overprivileged, or orphaned NHIs.

By consolidating fragmented processes into one platform, Natoma helps enterprises both reduce risk and streamline compliance.

5-What Are the Benefits of Securing and Governing NHIs?

Proper NHI security delivers benefits far beyond reducing risk:

• Stronger Cyber Defense - Eliminates blind spots attackers often exploit.
• Compliance Readiness - Ensures auditability and reduces regulatory exposure.
• Operational Efficiency - Simplifies management of thousands of service accounts, tokens, and secrets.
• Incident Response - Enables faster credential rotation and remediation during third-party or internal incidents.

Put simply: organizations that treat NHIs as first-class identities can respond to threats faster, meet compliance demands more easily, and maintain customer trust.

Bottom Line

NHIs are no longer hidden background players, they’re at the center of enterprise security. By understanding what they are, why they matter, and how to manage them, organizations can move from reactive firefighting to proactive resilience.

With Natoma’s unified approach, security leaders gain the visibility, context, and control needed to protect the most overlooked identities in their environments.

The future of identity security is not just human, it’s non-human too.