Secrets sprawl and NHI access governance: what are teams missing?

TL;DR: Arcon highlights that NHI access management has expanded from service accounts and hardcoded credentials into broader governance for secrets, APIs, bots, and cloud-native systems, with centralised control now treated as a core operating requirement. The underlying issue is not just storage, but lifecycle and access authority across machine-to-machine interactions.

Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Arcon: “ARCON Digital Vault”.

Key questions

Q: How should security teams handle hardcoded or poorly stored credentials in applications and automation scripts?

A: Treat hardcoded and poorly stored credentials as an immediate exposure problem, not a coding convenience.

Q: Why do long-lived secrets keep creating risk even when teams centralise them?

A: Centralisation does not remove risk if ownership, access scope, and revocation rules are unclear.

Q: What breaks when corporate IT machine identities are not lifecycle-managed?

A: What breaks is the assumption that mature infrastructure controls automatically govern non-human access.

Practitioner guidance

• Inventory embedded credentials across code and automation Search code repositories, scripts, CI pipelines, and deployment artefacts for hardcoded credentials, then assign each finding to an owner for remediation and revocation.
• Separate secret storage from secret governance Define who owns each secret, which systems may consume it, and what event triggers rotation or revocation, so the vault acts as a governed control plane rather than a passive store.
• Map every machine identity to a lifecycle trigger Tie service accounts, API keys, and tokens to provisioning, review, and offboarding events so access cannot survive workload retirement or ownership changes.

Bottom line: NHI risk is increasingly created by how secrets are governed across automation, APIs, bots, and cloud-native systems, not just by where they are stored.

What's in the full article

Arcon's full report covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Unified dashboard capabilities for managing digital assets and access permissions across machine and application identities
• How the report frames creation, mapping, and lifecycle management of digital identities in practice
• The report's vendor-specific description of data processing and access control workflows
• The full contextual framing behind the Executive View research that this analysis only summarises

👉 Read Arcon's report on NHI access governance and digital vault management →

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