Your organisation's digital infrastructure is constantly developing, however, with a silent threat lurking beneath the surface – neglected Non-Human Identities (NHIs).
From service accounts and API keys to certificates and secrets, these digital credentials have proliferated exponentially across cloud-native architectures, DevOps pipelines, and AI systems.
The Ticking Time Bomb Beneath Your Stack
For years, service accounts, API keys, certificates, and secrets have quietly spread across environments like digital mold. NHIs now outnumber humans by a factor of 25 to 50 in most organisations. With the rise of cloud-native architectures, DevOps pipelines, microservices, SaaS, and agentic AI, the growth has become exponential and unsustainable.
The problem isn’t new. It’s just ignored—until now. With the shift to automation, and with attackers increasingly targeting machine-to-machine credentials, the industry can’t afford to look away anymore. And the breaches are here. Major incidents tied to compromised NHIs were recorded just last year. The most common attack vector? The keys weren’t stolen, they were found.
Inventory First, Then Ownership
Most organisations don't know how many NHIs they have. They also can’t tell you who owns them or where they’re being used. Getting a full inventory is technically hard, especially in hybrid environments. Ownership is worse: accounts are created, used, abandoned, and inherited.
Additionally, inventory is an ongoing process. Every week, a new integration is deployed. A new secret is created. A new AI agent goes live. If you don’t know what you have, you’ll never know what has been compromised. NHIs are being born faster than you can govern them.
So, if you're just starting your NHI journey, don't chase perfection. Chase the inventory. Build your map. Then, figure out what to eliminate, what to keep, and what to never allow again.
From Strategy to Culture Shift
Suppose you actually set up an inventory for all your NHIs. You’ll quickly learn that:
- There’s too much noise.
- Most of it looks the same.
- Your “inventory” is a moving target
- False positives will bury your team.
- None of this scales without automation
However, you can’t address NHIs with automation and tools alone. It starts with people and processes. And here’s the catch: developers are tired of Identity and Access Management (IAM) teams acting like traffic cops.
Developers need support, not surveillance. NHIs will never be managed properly if every change requires an escalation path. By pairing automated, developer-friendly tooling with clear identity policies and risk-based prioritisation, organisations can protect themselves without turning security into a productivity bottleneck.
And yes, policies still matter. Most organisations lack even basic hygiene: no guidance on naming, no expiration rules, no joiner-mover-leaver flows, no recertifications, etc.
Start there. Set a baseline. Then wrap your tools and processes around it. Security doesn’t have to be a trade-off. With the right foundation, managing NHIs can be part of the flow—not an obstacle to it.
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