A Non-Human Identity (NHI) refers to a digital entity used for machine-to-machine access and authentication. In today’s rapidly evolving enterprise environments, NHIs play a critical role as organizations shift toward machine-centric architectures. As businesses embrace microservices, third-party integrations, and cloud-based solutions, a complex network of NHIs has emerged—one that now outnumbers human identities by a factor of 10x to 50x.
The NHI landscape is diverse, with definitions and structures varying depending on cloud providers, SaaS platforms, and on-premises systems. Providers such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, along with SaaS services like Snowflake and Databricks, and on-prem technologies like Active Directory, each employ different models for creating and managing NHIs. Unlike human identities, NHIs often rely on a wider variety of authentication mechanisms and do not benefit from Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which is common for human identities.
As businesses scale and automate, the importance of managing NHIs becomes clear. These identities are integral to modern security frameworks and represent a new paradigm distinct from traditional human identity management.
Examples of Non-Human Identities
Non-Human Identities include Service Accounts, System Accounts, Application Accounts, and Machine Identities. The authentication methods for NHIs are varied and typically include Secrets, Keys, Access Tokens, Certificates, and other specialized mechanisms designed to facilitate secure machine-to-machine communication.
In certain scenarios, identities are intrinsically tied to the authentication string itself, such as with Storage account access keys, Shared Access Signatures (SAS) tokens, and API keys for SaaS applications like Snowflake. These types of authentication mechanisms also encompass permission configurations, making identity management and access control more complex. As automation and AI-driven business processes increase, the growth of NHIs is expected to accelerate, emphasizing their importance in modern enterprise security.
Human Identities vs. Non-Human Identities
NHIs differ significantly from human identities across various key aspects:
- Decentralization: NHIs are typically not centrally managed like human identities. They are created across multiple platforms by different stakeholders, making it difficult to distinguish between human and machine identities.
- Ownership: NHIs are not tied to specific individuals, often being used by multiple administrators or applications, bypassing regulatory requirements.
- Scale: The sheer volume of NHIs, often 10 to 50 times larger than human identities, creates a massive and growing attack surface.
- Rate of Change: NHIs are frequently created and deprecated, evolving rapidly in line with code changes. This dynamic nature makes them difficult to govern, although some NHIs can persist for years without changes or expiration.
- Developer-Driven: Unlike human identities, NHIs are often created and controlled by developers or citizen developers using no-code or low-code tools, with little oversight from IT or security teams. This lack of awareness can lead to security gaps.
- Secret Expiration: While privileged user accounts often undergo frequent password rotations, many NHIs can remain active indefinitely, sometimes without expiration dates, which increases risk.
- Operational Risk: Managing NHIs poses operational risks, especially when organizations lack comprehensive visibility into their usage. Unauthorized secret rotations or mismanagement can disrupt vital workflows and production systems.
- Authentication Diversity: NHIs support various authentication methods, reflecting the evolution of technology. Unlike human identities, which use multi-factor authentication (MFA), NHIs rely on secrets alone for authentication. This leaves them vulnerable if an attacker gains access to the credentials, especially in cloud environments where APIs are the gatekeepers of access.
The Need for Non-Human Identity Management Solutions
Given their distinct lifecycle characteristics, NHIs introduce a range of operational challenges:
- Discovering and inventorying NHIs across multiple cloud platforms
- Identifying and prioritizing risks and violations
- Gathering contextual metadata, such as usage patterns, dependencies, and resource access, to safely remediate vulnerabilities
- Managing the lifecycle of both new and legacy NHIs
Despite these challenges, NHIs often remain overlooked within enterprises due to the lack of specialized tools. Existing security tools, such as CSPMs, PAMs, Secret Managers, and IAMs, were not designed to manage the lifecycle of NHIs. As a result, these tools fall short in securing NHIs, leaving organizations vulnerable.
Given the unique challenges posed by NHIs, there is an urgent need for specialized Non-Human Identity Management solutions. These solutions must address key requirements, including NHI discovery and inventory, risk assessment, lifecycle management, and enabling developer readiness.
Introducing NexusIAM for Non-Human Identity Management
NexusIAM provides a purpose-built platform designed specifically for managing NHIs. With capabilities tailored for discovery, inventory management, posture assessment, lifecycle automation, and developer readiness, NexusIAM enables organizations to address the unique challenges of NHI security effectively.
By adopting NexusIAM, organizations can gain comprehensive visibility into their NHI landscape, ensuring better governance, reduced risk, and streamlined management across their entire identity ecosystem.
Contact us today for a free assessment of your environment and discover how NexusIAM can help secure your non-human identities and manage your evolving identity perimeter.