Identity and access management (IAM) is a framework of business processes, policies, and technologies that facilitates the management of electronic or digital identities. With an IAM framework in place, IT managers can control user access to critical information within their organizations.

1. Human Identity Protection

To understand human identity protection, we must define both human identity and non-human identity upfront to clearly distinguish them.

Human identities, from a cybersecurity standpoint, are associated with individual users who interact with systems and applications, typically requiring multi factor authentication (MFA) and regular password changes.

Non-human identities (NHIs) represent applications, services, and automated processes, often operating without direct human oversight.

The primary distinction between human and non-human identities lies in their nature and the security protocols governing them and their respective access management.

1.1. Key Differences in Security Protocols and Oversight

Human identities are managed and protected with well-defined security practices, including strong authentication methods, role-based access controls, and regular monitoring of user activities. These identities are often subject to extensive monitoring to ensure compliance with security policies and regulatory requirements.

Conversely, NHIs are created to perform specific tasks and functions, such as automated backups or API communications, and are not directly monitored by individuals. As a result, they may not be subject to the same level of scrutiny, making them potential targets for exploitation.

1.2. Challenges in Managing and Securing NHIs vs Human

Managing and securing NHIs poses distinct challenges. Unlike human users, NHIs cannot respond to MFA prompts or perform regular password changes. This limitation often results in passwords or tokens being hardcoded into scripts or applications, which makes credential rotation and updates difficult. Moreover, NHIs typically require elevated privileges to perform their tasks, which heightens security risks if their credentials are compromised.

A major challenge lies in managing the vast number and diversity of NHIs within organizations. As cloud computing, microservices, and automated workflows have become widespread, NHIs have multiplied exponentially. This rapid growth makes it increasingly difficult for security teams to maintain proper visibility and control, particularly over NHIs that lack adequate documentation or oversight.

Based on these considerations, we have focused our analysis on Identity and Access Management (IAM) Cybersecurity services specializing in Non-human Identity (NHI) requirements. While the market offers numerous solutions for human identity protection, we anticipate significant enterprise demand for NHI protection services.

2. Non-human Identity (NHI) Protection

Non-human identities (NHIs) are digital entities used to represent machines, applications, and automated processes within an IT infrastructure. Unlike human identities, tied to individual users, NHIs facilitate machine-to-machine interactions and perform repetitive tasks without human intervention.

These machine identities are critical in both cloud-native and on-premises environments, where they help manage and automate complex workflows.

Machine identity consists of unique identifiers and cryptographic keys that authenticate and authorize machines (like devices, applications, and services) on a network. Similar to how humans use usernames and passwords for verification, machines use digital certificates and cryptographic keys to ensure secure communication and data exchange.

Examples of NHIs include API keys, OAuth tokens, service accounts, and system accounts.

A service account is a non-human account created to enable applications, systems, and services to communicate with each other.

Unlike user accounts tied to human users, service accounts represent the identity and permissions of specific applications or services, allowing them to securely interact with other systems, databases, and resources.

Each type of NHI serves a different purpose. API keys allow different software applications to communicate securely, while OAuth tokens enable authentication and authorization processes in web services. Service accounts are dedicated accounts in Active Directory used by applications to interact with other systems, performing tasks such as data backups and system monitoring.

NHIs play a pivotal role in ensuring seamless operations in digital environments. They enable continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, manage cloud services, and integrate disparate applications, thereby enhancing operational efficiency and automation. As a result of their widespread use, they pose significant security challenges, necessitating robust management and protection measures to prevent unauthorized access.

2.1. Enterprise Pain Points in Securing NHIs

2.1.1. Low confidence when securing NHIs

88% of organizations admit their NHI IAM practices lag behind their human IAM efforts. Organizations express significant anxiety about securing NHIs, with 69% being moderately or very concerned about potential attacks. Most struggle with basic NHI security—only 15% continuously review permissions for service accounts. (Source: Astrix / Cloud Security Alliance)

The situation is concerning: nearly 75% of enterprises believe they have exposed NHIs, and those that have experienced compromised NHIs report an average of 2.7 incidents in the past 12 months. With two-thirds of enterprises suffering at least one successful cyberattack from compromised non-human identities, organizations are clearly operating from a position of low confidence. (Source: Oasis Security)

2.1.2. Challenges with managing permissions

Managing permissions starts with existing practices on creating, managing, updating and deleting NHIs as appropriate needing an overhaul. 30.9% of organizations store long-term credentials directly in code, 23.7% share secrets through copying and pasting via email or messaging apps, and 15.5% use manual spreadsheets to store NHI secrets. (Source: Aembit)

Over-permissiveness is a common security issue in environments where NHIs are assigned amplified privileges more than necessary. This can be a result of poor security practices or misconfigurations, and it can allow attackers to exploit these excessive privileges to gain broader access within the network. (Source: Silverfort)

2.1.3. Fragmented approach to securing NHIs

The fragmented approach to securing Non-Human Identities (NHIs) stems from several key challenges:

1. Decentralized creation: NHIs can be created by any employee, often bypassing company policies, which results in poor oversight.
2. “Vault sprawl”: Organizations typically maintain six separate secret management systems across teams, leading to siloed operations and complex management.
3. Lack of visibility: Due to decentralized creation, organizations struggle to maintain a single source of truth for NHIs and their secrets.
4. Inadequate training: Many employees lack proper education on NHI security, leading to inconsistent practices.
5. Perception of productivity hindrance: Teams often view robust security measures as barriers to efficiency, prompting them to take shortcuts in NHI management.

This fragmentation results in significant operational inefficiencies and critical security vulnerabilities for organizations. (Source: GitGuardian)

2.1.4. NHI is large and increasing quickly

Non-human identities (NHIs) are experiencing explosive growth, driven by four major technological trends:

1. Cloud Computing and Microservices: The widespread adoption of cloud infrastructure and microservices has created vast networks of automated workflows and inter-service communications, requiring more NHIs than ever before. (Source: Aembit)
2. Automation and AI: Organizations are rapidly implementing AI and AI-enabled services to automate their business processes, leading to a surge in NHI deployment.
3. Internet of Things (IoT): The rapid expansion of IoT devices has created an enormous network of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications operating independently of human oversight.
4. Digital Transformation: The rapid acceleration in application development supporting digital transformation initiatives has created complex networks of autonomously interacting software systems. (Source: DarkReading)

NHIs significantly outnumber human IDs with an estimated 20x more NHIs than human identities and this volume will only increase (by 20% in 2025). NHI compromise has the potential to be significantly disruptive to business operations. Indeed, a majority (57%) of non-human identity compromises definitively got board-level attention, while 37% of respondents indicated their organization’s board may have delved into the details of the incident. (Source: Oasis Security)

2.2. Trends supporting the growing need and associated complexities of NHIs

2.2.1. Cloud adoption

The shift to cloud computing has significantly complicated non-human security —referring to security for automated processes, APIs, service accounts, IoT devices, and other non-user entities due to several factors

• (a) Expanded Attack Surface:Cloud infrastructure scales rapidly, with ephemeral resources (e.g., containers, serverless functions – further defined below) constantly spinning up and down. This dynamic environment creates an attack surface that’s difficult to track and secure. Cloud ecosystems also rely heavily on APIs for service communication, with each API endpoint representing a potential vulnerability if not properly authenticated, authorized, and monitored. Overall, cloud environments introduce diverse non-human identity types—from Microsoft Active Directory to AWS IAM users to GitHub API keys—creating a more distributed and complex identity landscape than traditional on-premises environments.
• (b) Proliferation of Non-Human Identities (NHI):Cloud technologies have led to an explosion in non-human identities. Estimates suggest that by 2025, there will be 50 times more non-human identities than human identities. As organizations adopt multi-cloud strategies, the complexity of managing these identities grows exponentially:
  • Different cloud providers use distinct identity models and authentication mechanisms
  • Authorization across multiple cloud environments becomes challenging due to varying code formats and sources of truth
  • The number of processes and APIs across multiple clouds can far exceed the number of human employees in a company
  In summary, the ratio of NHI to human identities will continue to rise as enterprises accelerate their shift to the cloud and embrace AI technologies in the future.
• (c) Lifecycle Management Challenges:Unlike human identities, which follow a predictable lifecycle of hiring and firing, NHIs in the cloud:
  • Don’t have a clear lifecycle
  • May not be associated with any human at all
  • Require strict authorization controls to operate within their designated scope
  Cloud technologies like containers and serverless functions may exist for only minutes or seconds, rendering traditional perimeter-based security tools (e.g., firewalls) ineffective. The ephemeral nature of these resources makes it challenging to track and monitor malicious activity in real-time. In conclusion, while cloud computing offers numerous benefits, it has also dramatically increased the complexity of non-human identity management. Organizations must adapt their security strategies to address these new challenges and ensure robust governance of their expanding digital ecosystems.

2.2.2. IoT expansion

The Internet of Things (IoT) has dramatically increased the complexity of non-human identity security, creating new challenges and risks for organizations’ digital ecosystems. IoT’s rapid growth has led to an unprecedented number of connected devices, each needing its own unique identifier (UID). This proliferation of non-human identities includes:

• IoT devices
• Computers
• Mobile devices
• Servers
• Workloads
• Service accounts
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• ML models

The vast scale of these identities poses a significant challenge for traditional identity and access management (IAM) systems, which were originally designed for human users:

1. IoT devices often have limited security capabilities because of their constraints in processing power, memory, and energy consumption, making them vulnerable targets for attackers seeking to disrupt operations or steal data
2. Devices typically ship with default usernames and passwords that users rarely change, creating security vulnerabilities
3. IoT devices come from various manufacturers with differing security standards, resulting in inconsistent identity management policies

2.2.3. Enterprise automation

The rise of automation has dramatically increased the complexity of securing NHI—such as service accounts, APIs, bots, and automated workflows (RPAs) —by introducing unprecedented scale, speed, and dynamic interactions that traditional security models struggle to oversee.

Automation tools like Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes) generate vast numbers of ephemeral identities (e.g., temporary tokens, containerized workloads) that are often short-lived and distributed across hybrid environments. These identities require precise, least-privilege permissions, but the rapid pace of deployment and the interdependency of automated systems make it easy for misconfigurations (e.g., over-permissioned roles, hardcoded secrets) to propagate at scale.

Additionally, automation’s reliance on APIs and machine-to-machine communication expands the attack surface, as compromised credentials or vulnerable integrations can enable lateral movement across systems. Traditional perimeter-based security tools are ill-equipped to track and secure these dynamic identities, while the sheer volume of automated processes often outpaces human oversight, leaving gaps in visibility and response. As a result, organizations must now contend with securing identities that exist for seconds, operate autonomously, and interact in ways that defy static policies— demanding adaptive, real-time security frameworks to mitigate risks.

2.2.4. AI agents

With AI agents performing increasingly sensitive and autonomous tasks, the attack surface is growing. These non-human agents are accessing critical systems, processing sensitive data, and even making decisions that affect the operational state of entire infrastructures. Naturally, they become high-value targets for cyberattacks.

The proliferation of AI Agents (autonomous systems capable of learning, decision-making, and interacting with other entities) will significantly amplify the complexity of securing NHI by introducing dynamic, adaptive, and opaque behaviours that defy traditional security frameworks. Unlike predefined workflows, AI agents operate with autonomy, often creating, modifying, or assuming identities in real time to fulfil tasks (e.g., spawning temporary cloud resources, negotiating API access, or federating with third-party services). Their ability to learn and evolve means their interactions and permissions can shift unpredictably, making it difficult to enforce consistent security policies or detect anomalies. For example, an AI agent might autonomously escalate privileges to resolve a task, inadvertently bypassing guardrails, or mimic legitimate behaviour that malicious activity goes unnoticed.

In addition, AI agents often rely on opaque decision-making processes (e.g., neural networks), complicating audits and accountability. Their integration with other AI systems and external APIs creates interdependencies, where a compromise in one agent’s identity could cascade across ecosystems. Compounding this, adversarial AI techniques (as we have seen in our previous research in AI Security) — such as poisoning training data or crafting inputs to manipulate agent behaviour—could exploit identity vulnerabilities at machine speed, outpacing human response.

Three considerations regarding AI agents and their identities’ security:

• Expanding the attack surfaceUnlike humans, AI agents should not have persistent access to resources, as this creates vulnerabilities and expands the enterprise attack surface. Traditional human IAM solutions adapted for AI agents often rely on hardcoded credentials, service accounts, or API keys—all of which provide continuous access to underlying resources and unnecessarily increase risk. Instead, AI agents should operate with just-in-time (JIT) and just-enough-access (JEA) provisioning. Each access request should undergo dynamic evaluation against policy frameworks, using ephemeral tokens rather than static credentials.
• Dynamic behavior and the need for flexibilityAI agents are dynamic systems. Their power comes from their ability to learn, adapt, and perform tasks in novel ways. This dynamic behavior creates unique security challenges. For example, dynamic access controls let AI agents receive permissions based on real-time context instead of static roles. As an agent’s tasks change—whether accessing new datasets or interacting with different systems—its access adjusts accordingly. Through non-human IAM, agents receive only the permissions they need at any given moment, reducing risk and preventing over-privileged access.
• AI agents require governance and auditabilityBeyond access control, organizations must establish clear policies for AI agent actions that align with business rules, legal requirements, and ethical guidelines. Comprehensive audit trails must document every decision to ensure accountability and compliance. AI agents have evolved beyond simple tools—they are now active participants in complex ecosystems, autonomously managing everything from customer support to infrastructure operations.

3. Use cases

3.1 Credential Compromise (API Keys, Tokens, Certificates)

3.2. Misconfigured Permissions and Privilege Escalation

3.3. Automated Bot Attacks

4. Best Practices for Securing NHIs

Securing non-human identities (NHIs) requires a comprehensive approach to address their unique security challenges. Here are key practices for robust NHI protection:

4.1. Implementing Robust Access Policies and Tools

1. Least Privilege Principle: Grant NHIs only the permissions needed for their specific tasks. Conduct regular audits and adjust access controls to eliminate excessive privileges.
2. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Use RBAC to manage access policies based on each NHI’s specific role and responsibilities.
3. Access Policy Automation: Deploy automated tools to enforce access policies consistently across all NHIs, reducing human error and ensuring compliance.

4.2. Real-Time Monitoring and Auditing Credentials

1. Continuous Monitoring: Track NHI activities in real time to quickly detect anomalies and security threats.
2. Audit Logs: Keep detailed logs of all NHI actions and review them regularly to spot suspicious activities.
3. Alerting Mechanisms: Configure automated alerts to notify security teams of unusual NHI activity, enabling swift threat response.

4.3. Using Ephemeral Certificates and Zero Trust Principles

1. Ephemeral Certificates: Use short-lived certificates instead of static credentials to minimize the risk of compromise.
2. Zero Trust Architecture: Trust no entity by default, whether inside or outside the network. Verify the identity and access privileges of NHIs continuously.
3. Micro-Segmentation: Isolate NHIs within the network to contain potential breaches and prevent lateral movement.

5. Conclusion

As enterprises accelerate their adoption of cloud-native architectures, automation, and AI-driven systems, non-human identities have become both mission‑critical and disproportionately exposed. While human IAM is relatively mature, NHIs remain over‑privileged, poorly governed, and fragmented across teams and tools—creating a rapidly expanding and often invisible attack surface. Static credentials, weak lifecycle management, and limited visibility mean that NHI compromise is not an edge case but a systemic risk.

This risk is further amplified by trends such as multi‑cloud adoption, large‑scale automation, IoT expansion, and the emergence of autonomous AI agents, all of which dramatically increase the volume, velocity, and complexity of non-human access. Traditional IAM and perimeter‑based security models are fundamentally ill‑suited to manage identities that are ephemeral, autonomous, and machine‑to‑machine by design.

As a result, enterprises must treat non‑human identity security as a first‑class security discipline. This requires moving beyond retrofitted human IAM controls toward purpose‑built NHI solutions grounded in least privilege, ephemeral and context‑aware access, continuous monitoring, and unified governance. Without this shift, organisations will struggle to maintain control over increasingly autonomous digital ecosystems—and the business impact of NHI failures will continue to escalate to the highest levels of governance.