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What Happens to Non-Human Identities After Employee Offboarding?


(@token)
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Read full article here:  https://www.token.security/blog/offboarded-employees-and-the-non-human-identities-they-leave-behind-the-complete-guide?source=nhimg

 

Employee offboarding is a structured and well-practiced process when it comes to laptops and user logins — but what about the Non-Human Identities (NHIs) they’ve created? From API keys and OAuth tokens to service accounts and AI agents, these machine identities often persist long after their human owners are gone, silently expanding an organization's attack surface and posing long-term security risks.

Key challenges include:

  • Orphaned NHIs with no clear ownership or lifecycle management.

  • Over-privileged identities in cloud, SaaS, and CI/CD pipelines that attackers can exploit.

  • AI agents that continue triggering automations with stale or excessive access.

  • Decentralized identity sprawl across hybrid environments, often invisible to traditional IAM tools.

In fact, NHIs now outnumber human identities by as much as 45:1, yet most offboarding policies ignore them entirely. The result? A growing, unmanaged attack surface that persists long after an employee is gone.

 

This article outlines a step-by-step strategy to fix that:

  • Discover and map all NHIs tied to employees.

  • Rotate credentials and revoke access immediately upon departure.

  • Reassign ownership and automate lifecycle controls.

  • Extend policy coverage to include AI agents and automation workflows.

If your offboarding checklist ends with “disable their login,” it’s time to rewrite the rules for machine identity offboarding.

 

With Token Security, organizations gain complete visibility, ownership mapping, and remediation workflows through tools like the NHI Risk Graph™. That means faster, safer offboarding—and no forgotten identities left behind.

 

This topic was modified 7 days ago by Token Security
This topic was modified 7 days ago 2 times by Abdelrahman

   
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