Non-Human Identity or Machine Identity?

The Non-Human Identity Management Group launched a Poll on LinkedIn asking the industry how we classify Service Accounts, System Accounts, API Keys, OAuth Tokens, Secrets etc.

• The vast majority of Vendors seem to use the Non-Human Identity (NHI) term - is there a VC play here?

• Gartner / Microsoft / CSA seem to use Machine Identity Term, but :

• Non-Human Identity actually won by a large margin, if we look at unique votes per organisation

• We had approx. 80 companies vote, so a very broad vote and opinions from the industry

• 200+ votes - it was a very close race, with Non-Human Identity just edging ahead of Machine Identity ???

So are we ever going to converge on a common term?

• Very unlikely - the main thing is we need to focus on as an industry is helping customers solve Non-Human Identity / Machine Identity / Workload Identity risks.

• The debate rages on !!!

• CSA have just launched a survey about Non-Human Identities

• Gartner mentioned Non-Human Identities in Security & Risk Summit 2023

Does it really matter what term we use?