About One Identity
One Identity delivers trusted identity security for enterprises worldwide to protect and simplify access to digital identities. With flexible subscription and deployment options – from self-managed to fully managed – our solutions integrate seamlessly into your identity fabric to strengthen your identity perimeter, protect against breaches and ensure governance and compliance. One Identity is a trusted leader in identity governance and administration (IGA), privileged access management (PAM), and access management (AM) for security without compromise. For more information, visit www.oneidentity.com.
Introduction
It’s not just people accessing your systems anymore. Machines, bots, scripts, services and AI agents – known as non-human identities (NHIs) – are now outnumbering humans 50 to 1 in most organizations.
And they’re not slowing down – projections say that number could hit 100 to 1 in the not-so-distant future. But the thing that many organizations have failed to realize is that just because they’re operating quietly in the background doesn’t mean that they don’t carry risks. Actually, it’s that silent and unassuming nature that makes them so dangerous. In many environments, they remain overlooked, under-managed and misunderstood.
We pulled together experts across identity governance and administration (IGA), access management (AM), privileged access management (PAM) and Active Directory management (AD Mgmt) to talk through what NHIs are, why they matter to your security and how to get them under control.
Let’s start with the basics: What exactly is a non-human identity?
A non-human identity (NHI) represents any machine, application, service, software component, network resource or automated process that needs to authenticate itself to access data or resources within an environment, without
direct human intervention.
Historically, these were fairly static service accounts. But now, with AI, RPA bots, and agentic systems in the mix, NHIs are taking on a more dynamic and powerful role. In the past, NHIs didn’t have agency. They simply executed tasks they were programmed to do. But with the evolution of AI and automation, some of these identities now make real-time decisions – and that can create huge risks.
If NHIs have been around for years, why are they suddenly such a concern?
Two reasons: scale and risk.
First, there’s been an explosion in the number of NHIs, thanks to cloud adoption, DevOps, microservices and AI. It’s now common to see tens of thousands – or even hundreds of thousands – of machine identities in one organization. Second, attackers have realized that NHIs are often a blind spot for IT – making them a prime entry point with high privileges and limited oversight.
NHIs often go unnoticed until something breaks. We’ve seen breaches where attackers compromised an overlooked service account and used it to move laterally across an entire environment. In other cases, compliance is what’s driving the urgency. Audits are beginning to flag unmanaged NHIs as a serious gap.
NHIs are a weak link in many businesses and attackers are taking full advantage.
How do organizations typically realize they have a nonhuman identity problem?
Chances are – one of two ways: an audit or a breach.
It’s common for teams to discover NHIs they didn’t even know existed (accounts that were created for a now-defunct service, or automation that’s quietly been running with elevated privileges for years). These identities are easily lost in the shuffle because they don’t “belong” to anyone. There’s no
inbox to send a password expiration warning to, no user behavior to monitor.
And because NHIs are designed for efficiency and speed, they tend to work far faster than any human ever could. That means when something goes wrong – whether it’s a misconfiguration or malicious activity – it escalates quickly and at scale.
What are the biggest risks that unmanaged/poorly managed NHIs pose?
The biggest issue is privilege without accountability.
NHIs tend to have high privileges and they’re not being watched. NHIs aren’t moral – they don’t make decisions with human judgment – they just do what
they’re automated to do.
To complicate things more, traditional security controls often don’t apply to NHIs. Time- and location-based policies might catch suspicious behavior in a human account, but an NHI that runs 24/7 won’t trigger those kinds of alerts. The anomalies for NHIs look very different from human accounts, and most people have no idea how to secure them – if they’re even aware they exist.
And then there’s the issue of the rapid pace in which NHIs function. A human doing something non-compliant takes time – clicking, typing, pausing. An NHI can run thousands of actions in seconds. So a misstep or malicious command can spiral out of control almost instantly.
How can organizations gain visibility into all the NHIs operating in their environments?
Start with a full application audit. That’s where many NHIs live – tied to services and automated workflows. From there, work to classify what types of NHIs exist: are you dealing with legacy service accounts? AI agents? Robotic process automation?
It helps to clearly define what qualifies as a non-human identity. That might sound basic, but many teams struggle here. Without an agreement on what to look for, it’s nearly impossible to manage them effectively.
The other half of the battle is finding out who should be responsible for managing NHIs. Often, no one owns these identities. Everyone’s using automation or AI, but no one’s accountable for its identity. One of the first and most impactful steps is to make sure every NHI has an owner.
Who should own nonhuman identities?
Ownership should align with function. If the NHI supports a particular system or business process, whoever owns that process should also own the identity. That means being responsible for access reviews, credential rotation and overall risk management.
Too often, NHIs live in a no-man’s-land where IT assumes the business owns them, and the business assumes IT does. That ambiguity is dangerous. Someone needs to be clearly accountable.
What governance policies and controls should be in place to effectively manage NHIs?
At a minimum, every NHI should have an assigned owner. That’s your first line of defense.
Next, access should be managed using least privilege. If the NHI doesn’t need admin rights, don’t grant them. Regularly review entitlements and scrub any unnecessary permissions.
Credential hygiene is also crucial:
1. When a credential is created, it must be recorded.
2. Avoid credential reuse so you maintain the ability to turn off any single point of access instantly.
3. Enforce password rotation for a predefined period of time.
4. Ensure NHIs are clearly identifiable in
your logs before there’s a crisis.
While NHIs can’t use human MFA methods like push notifications, there are still ways to implement layered verification. IP allow lists, device certificates and token-based access restrictions can go a long way.
And don’t forget about monitoring. You should be recording session activity for privileged NHIs – just like you would for an admin user. That audit trail can be invaluable for both security and troubleshooting.
What role does an “identity fabric” play here?
Identity fabric is about bringing together the core pillars of identity security – IGA, AM, PAM and AD Mgmt – into a unified framework.
Take an AI agent acting on behalf of a user. It may request access like a human, use permissions like a human – so it should go through the same lifecycle management. That includes onboarding, access approvals, privilege reviews and even session recording.
By unifying identity security tools, you get a full picture – not just of what an NHI is doing, but also of what it can do. That insight is critical for managing risk effectively.
If you’re a CISO just getting started on NHI management, what’s step one?
Start with discovery. Run an audit to identify NHIs in your environment. That includes reviewing your identity provider, scanning for service accounts and analyzing access logs.
Once you know what you’re dealing with:
• Assign ownership
• Review and enforce access controls
• Remove or disable stale identities
• Implement layered verification (even without human MFA)
• Define policies around credential creation, reuse and rotation
It’s a lot – but it’s doable. And it’s necessary.
What emerging trends or technologies will most impact on how we secure NHIs?
AI is the biggest wildcard.
Agentic AI systems are now capable of making decisions and taking action across environments far faster than humans can keep up. That puts huge pressure on organizations to mature their identity practices and rethink how risk is detected and mitigated.
At the same time, AI will also help with NHI security. We’re already seeing tools that use AI to discover and classify identities, monitor for anomalies and
suggest remediation paths.
But the key message is this: don’t outsource responsibility to AI itself. NHIs, especially those powered by AI, still need human oversight. Without it, you’re handing over the keys without knowing who – or what – is driving.
Final thoughts
NHIs aren’t just a new technical challenge – they’re a cultural shift. They don’t clock in or fill out timesheets, but they still need governance. They don’t make decisions like people, but they can cause just as much damage – faster. Treat them like any other identity: Track them, govern them, secure them. And most importantly – assign someone to care about them.
Because the next breach may not come through a person – it may come through something that doesn’t even have a name.
