How to Strengthen Your Identity Security Program by Reducing Machine Identity Risk

Read full article here: https://www.sailpoint.com/blog/mitigating-machine-identity-risk/?utm_source=nhimg

Identity security has become a cornerstone of modern enterprise protection. As organizations move toward a digital-first model, identities—both human and non-human—have become the new perimeter of security. Cyber attackers no longer just target users; they increasingly exploit the sprawling ecosystem of machine identities that now outnumber human identities by a wide margin.

While most enterprises have mature controls around human access, securing machine identities—including applications, APIs, services, bots, and devices—remains a significant challenge. A recent SailPoint study found that 72% of identity professionals believe machine identities are more difficult to manage than human identities. The reasons are familiar: fragmented internal processes, manual management overhead, and a lack of identity tool functionality. In fact, two-thirds of respondents said managing machine identities requires more manual effort than managing human users.

The combination of scale, complexity, and lack of visibility creates fertile ground for cyber risk. Without proper oversight, machine accounts with excessive privileges or stale credentials can become prime targets for exploitation.

1. Improve Machine Identity Visibility

You can’t protect what you can’t see.
According to SailPoint’s findings, 62% of companies admit they have active machine identities operating without visibility. That means countless service accounts, API keys, and application credentials are running autonomously, often outside security’s line of sight.

This blind spot is especially dangerous because many machine accounts are designed to run in the background, without user interaction. As long as systems function smoothly, these accounts can persist indefinitely—sometimes years after the service they supported has been retired.

A strong identity security program must start with discovery and classification:

• Discover all machine accounts across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem systems.
• Classify accounts by type (service, API, application, workload).
• Assign ownership: Every machine account should have a designated human owner responsible for oversight and periodic access review.

This approach doesn’t just improve visibility—it builds accountability and ensures that machine identities are governed with the same rigor as human ones.

2. Navigate a Multi-Vendor Identity Fabric

Many organizations rely on a patchwork of identity solutions—IAM platforms, PAM tools, certificate managers, API gateways, and cloud-native identity systems. While each plays an important role, this fragmented approach can lead to operational inefficiencies and blind spots.

A modern enterprise identity environment demands a holistic and unified identity fabric—one that connects these tools under a shared framework for policy, automation, and visibility.

Key elements of a unified identity approach include:

• Centralized policy framework governing both human and non-human identities.
• Consistent automation workflows to manage provisioning, rotation, and decommissioning.
• Standardized APIs and data models enabling interoperability across tools and clouds.

By consolidating visibility and automation under a single model, organizations can eliminate redundant processes, reduce risk exposure, and streamline governance. This “fabric” approach transforms identity from a compliance obligation into a proactive, adaptive control plane for security.

3. Make Identity Security Work for You

The rapid proliferation of machine identities will only accelerate as automation, AI agents, and microservices continue to grow. To stay ahead, organizations must move beyond tool sprawl and adopt integrated identity security strategies that encompass both humans and machines.

Here’s how to make that shift:

• Leverage automation to handle routine lifecycle events—creation, rotation, and deletion.
• Integrate discovery and posture assessment into continuous monitoring workflows.
• Embed identity checks into CI/CD pipelines and service provisioning.
• Establish governance ownership for every non-human identity.

A unified identity security framework brings together these capabilities to deliver comprehensive protection, operational efficiency, and real-time visibility across the full identity landscape.

Final Thoughts

Machine identities represent both the backbone and the Achilles’ heel of modern enterprise infrastructure. When left unmanaged, they expose critical systems to hidden risks. When governed effectively, they become a foundation of digital trust.

By embracing a unified, automation-driven identity security program, organizations can reduce manual effort, close visibility gaps, and strengthen their overall security posture—ensuring that every identity, human or machine, is protected and accountable.