Why IGA Alone Isn’t Enough?

Read full article here: https://www.oasis.security/blog/why-do-i-need-nhim-if-i-already-have-a-great-iga-tool?source=nhimg

If your organization already uses a powerful Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) platform, you might be wondering — do I really need another tool to manage identities?

The short answer is yes — because today’s biggest identity risk isn’t human.

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) like API keys, service accounts, tokens, and machine credentials now outnumber humans in enterprise environments — sometimes by a factor of 20, even 50 to 1. This shift represents more than just scale — it demands a fundamentally different approach to governance and security.

While IGA excels at managing user access, it wasn’t built for cloud-native automation, ephemeral credentials, or sprawling machine-to-machine interactions. That’s where Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) comes in.

IGA vs. NHIM: What’s the Difference?

What IGA Does Best

IGA platforms were designed to manage human identity lifecycles. This includes:

• Provisioning/deprovisioning users based on HR events
• Access approvals and certification campaigns
• Role management and segregation of duties
• Compliance reporting and audit readiness

These capabilities are essential for managing employees, contractors, and partners across enterprise applications. But IGA tools are largely blind to automated identities, such as service accounts, tokens, and scripts that power modern infrastructure.

Where IGA Falls Short

IGA struggles with:

• Tracking dynamically created secrets and tokens
• Discovering undocumented service accounts embedded in code or CI/CD pipelines
• Enforcing expiration or rotation of credentials
• Mapping machine-to-machine dependencies
• Managing privileges without owners or access reviews

What NHIM Does That IGA Can’t

Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) platforms are purpose-built for the machine-first world. They address the full lifecycle of non-human identities — from creation and usage to rotation and decommissioning.

Key features include:

• Continuous discovery of machine identities across clouds, pipelines, and apps
• Ownership mapping and policy enforcement for every credential
• Usage monitoring and anomaly detection
• Automatic rotation and expiration of secrets
• Safe decommissioning of unused or dormant credentials

With NHIM, security teams can reduce exposure, prevent lateral movement, and gain full visibility into the non-human access landscape.

Best Practices for Unified Governance

Here’s how to align your IGA and NHIM strategies to build a secure, scalable identity program:

Apply Zero Trust to All Identities

• Enforce least privilege for both users and NHIs
• Conduct automated access reviews
• Implement role or environment-based segmentation (e.g., separate dev/test/prod secrets)

Use Cloud-Native and Hybrid Capabilities

• Choose tools that integrate across AWS, Azure, GCP, and SaaS
• Ensure support for on-prem directories, AD, and legacy apps
• Prioritize platform-agnostic visibility and control

Enable Real-Time Discovery and Alerting

• Automatically detect unauthorized tokens, service accounts, or API keys
• Monitor NHI behavior for anomalies and misuse
• Integrate with vaults, logs, and identity providers for centralized intelligence