Because they govern machine-to-machine access at scale. Embedded SIMs, certificates, and remote management tokens function as non-human identities with provisioning, authorization, and revocation requirements. If those controls are weak, organisations end up with persistent device trust that is difficult to audit and even harder to retire cleanly.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Embedded SIMs, device certificates, and remote management tokens are not just telecom or fleet-management details. They are machine identities that can authenticate, authorize, and persist across large device populations. That makes them part of nhi governance, especially when the same credentials are reused across regions, vendors, or hardware generations. NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reinforces that identity, access, and lifecycle controls must cover the full asset environment, not only user accounts.
The governance problem is that embedded connectivity often outlives the person who deployed it and the system that first needed it. A remote management platform can silently become the control plane for thousands of devices, so one weak token or stale certificate can create broad and durable access. NHIMG’s Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs frames this as a lifecycle issue, not a one-time provisioning task. In practice, many security teams discover the exposure only after a carrier change, device refresh, or emergency support event exposes credentials that were never meant to be long-lived.
How It Works in Practice
For NHI governance, the key question is who or what is allowed to create, bind, rotate, suspend, and retire the identity attached to the device. An embedded SIM may authenticate the device to a carrier, while a certificate may authenticate it to a device-management plane, and a remote management token may authorize actions such as configuration pushes, resets, or firmware changes. Each of those artifacts should be treated as a distinct secret with a defined owner, expiry, and revocation path.
Current guidance suggests four operational controls matter most:
- Inventory every machine identity, including eSIM profiles, certificates, API tokens, and vendor-issued access credentials.
- Bind each identity to a specific device class, purpose, and approved management scope.
- Rotate or reissue credentials on a defined schedule, with short TTLs where operationally feasible.
- Log every privileged action from the remote management plane and alert on abnormal enrollment, reuse, or geolocation changes.
This is where NHI governance overlaps with NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 Security and Privacy Controls: access control, audit logging, and system lifecycle protections need to extend to device identities as well as people. The NHIMG 52 NHI Breaches Analysis is a useful reminder that over-privileged and poorly rotated non-human credentials are recurring root causes, not rare edge cases. These controls tend to break down when a single remote-management tenant is shared across mixed device fleets because device ownership, revocation authority, and service-provider boundaries become ambiguous.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter device control often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance faster field support against stricter identity lifecycle discipline. That tradeoff becomes visible in roaming devices, offline industrial assets, and legacy hardware that cannot support modern certificate automation.
There is no universal standard for this yet, but best practice is evolving toward a stronger separation between device connectivity identity and administrative control identity. For example, an eSIM may be sufficient for network attachment, while remote administration should still require separate, time-bound authorization with explicit change approval. That separation reduces the blast radius if one credential is exposed, but it can complicate recovery workflows when devices are remote or intermittently connected.
Another common edge case is vendor-operated support access. Third-party remote access should be treated as a temporary privileged pathway, not a standing exception, and should be reviewed the same way as any other NHI. NHIMG’s Regulatory and Audit Perspectives and Top 10 NHI Issues both align with that approach: if the platform can provision, modify, or deactivate device access, it is part of the identity attack surface and must be governed accordingly.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10, OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 and CSA MAESTRO address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 | Machine credentials and device identities need full inventory and ownership. |
| OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 | Remote management platforms act like autonomous control planes with tool access. | |
| CSA MAESTRO | Covers governance of machine-to-machine access and control-plane trust. | |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-1 | Device authentication and access control are core identity governance concerns. |
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | Supports lifecycle, access control, and audit requirements for machine credentials. |
Treat remote management actions as privileged, time-bound operations with explicit policy checks.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on July 14, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
