Per-user archiving means an item is archived only for the person who chooses to hide it. Other users who share the same item can still see and use it normally. This matters in shared vaults because visibility changes do not equal access removal, and ownership remains a governance question.
Expanded Definition
Per-user archiving is a visibility control, not an access control. It lets one person hide an item from their own view while leaving the underlying shared object intact for everyone else who has access. In NHI-driven environments, this distinction matters because shared vault entries, API keys, service account records, and automation artifacts often have multiple legitimate viewers or operators.
Definitions vary across vendors, but the operational rule is consistent: archiving for one user should not be mistaken for deletion, revocation, or ownership transfer. In a shared vault, the archived item may still be active, discoverable through other roles, and subject to workflow actions by teammates or automation. That makes per-user archiving a local convenience feature with governance implications, especially when used alongside NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 practices for access control and asset management.
At NHI Management Group, the key distinction is that hiding an object from one user does not reduce the object’s lifecycle risk, credential exposure, or accountability burden. The most common misapplication is treating per-user archiving as equivalent to offboarding or revocation, which occurs when teams assume a hidden shared credential is no longer active.
Examples and Use Cases
Implementing per-user archiving rigorously often introduces a usability and governance tradeoff, requiring organisations to weigh cleaner personal workspaces against the risk of confusing hidden items with inactive ones.
- A platform engineer archives an old shared API key in a vault view, but the key remains visible to incident responders who still need it for rollback.
- A security analyst hides a deprecated service account record from their dashboard while the account is still referenced by a legacy job owned by another team.
- An operator archives a rotated certificate entry to reduce clutter, yet the shared vault object remains audit-relevant until all dependent systems are updated.
- A team lead uses per-user archiving to clear a personal queue, but governance still requires confirmation that the archived item has not been confused with revocation.
- During cleanup reviews, teams compare archived views with the authoritative inventory described in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs and align those findings with NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 asset and access practices.
Used well, per-user archiving helps reduce interface noise without changing entitlement state. Used poorly, it becomes a silent documentation gap that masks who can still act on a shared NHI asset.
Why It Matters in NHI Security
Per-user archiving matters because NHI risk is often hidden behind shared visibility layers, and the underlying object can remain active long after one person stops seeing it. That creates audit gaps, stale assumptions, and a false sense of remediation. This is especially dangerous in shared vaults, where visibility, ownership, and authority are not the same thing.
The NHI Management Group research base shows how often organisations struggle with fundamental NHI oversight, including the fact that only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs. When visibility is already limited, per-user archiving can further obscure whether a credential, token, or shared record is still live, still referenced, or still exposed. That makes it a governance issue as much as a UX feature.
Practitioners should treat archived-for-me state as non-authoritative and verify the actual entitlement, lifecycle, and revocation status before closing an incident or change ticket. Organisations typically encounter the consequences only after an audit, a credential misuse event, or a failed offboarding review, at which point per-user archiving becomes operationally unavoidable to address.
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 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0, NIST SP 800-63, NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) and NIST AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-04 | Per-user archiving can mask shared NHI visibility without changing actual access or lifecycle state. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-1 | Access state must be distinguished from UI visibility to avoid mistaken revocation assumptions. |
| NIST SP 800-63 | Identity records must remain authoritative even when a user hides a shared item locally. | |
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | AC-1 | Zero Trust requires explicit authorization checks, not assumptions based on visibility state. |
| NIST AI RMF | Governance processes should preserve traceability when system views differ by user. |
Keep identity and credential records current so hidden items are not mistaken for deprovisioned ones.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on August 28, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
