The Non-Human Identity Problem: Understanding and Addressing the Biggest Blindspot of 2025
Enterprise-level companies are expected to max out the benefits of automation within IT systems, but at what cost? Organizations are facing an often overlooked and growing security risk: Non-Human Identities (NHIs).
These are programmatic access credentials like API keys, connection strings, and service accounts that allow machines, applications, and scripts to access critical resources. While necessary for operational efficiency, NHIs are a devastating attack vector if not properly managed.
Non-human identities (NHIs) are not a new problem. But for the first time, there is a complete solution for the market, solving the second most frequent attack vector and the costliest type of attack for organizations (by IBM and Verizon).
The Scope of the Non-Human Identity Problem
Consider this: for every human employee in an organization, there are, on average, 92 non-human identities. These credentials are frequently created by teams like developers and DevOps, whose focus is functionality, not security. This often leaves security teams unaware of how many non-human identities exist, where they are stored, or how they are being used. Not only are security teams unaware, they don’t have control over the NHIs or processes developers take when creating or sharing them.
Adding to this complexity is the lack of context surrounding these credentials. Non-human identities are typically long, randomized strings, making it nearly impossible to determine their human ownership, permissions, and purpose. Even if a security team identifies a potentially risky non-human credential, the fear of disrupting business operations prevents them from taking swift action.
This fragmented and unmonitored environment creates opportunities for attackers. If even one non-human identity is exposed, whether through public code repositories, misconfigurations, or leaked credentials, it can serve as a gateway for lateral movement and persistent access. And once an NHI is exposed by a bad actor, it takes barely two minutes for any hope of containing the breach to be lost.
Why Non-Human Identities Are So Hard to Manage
Security leaders face two primary challenges with non-human identities:
- Discovery and Inventory: Unlike human identities, non-human identities are scattered across vaults, code repositories, messaging tools, and cloud platforms. Security teams rarely have an accurate, up-to-date inventory of these credentials. Without this foundational step, identifying risks or remediating misconfigurations becomes impossible.
- Business Dependency and Fear of Disruption: Organizations rely heavily on non-human identities to automate workflows, connect applications, and enable seamless operations. If a security team disables or rotates a credential without fully understanding its usage, critical business processes can grind to a halt. This fear of disruption often leads to inaction, leaving risky credentials untouched.
Understanding the Impact of Non-Human Identity Breaches
Non-human identity breaches are catastrophic, often flying under the radar for extended periods. Unlike human identity breaches, which may trigger obvious signs of compromise (e.g., unauthorized logins), because of the lack of inventory, and security monitoring for non-human identities, attackers leveraging non-human identities can operate undetected for months. This persistence allows adversaries to escalate privileges, move laterally, and exfiltrate sensitive data.
A prime example is the LastPass breach, which started with an exposed non-human identity. Once attackers obtained access, they systematically created additional non human identities, enabling repeated intrusions. Without proper detection and response capabilities, organizations can find themselves in an endless cycle of breaches.
Addressing the Challenge: A Modern Approach to Non-Human Identity Management
To reclaim control of non-human identities, organizations need a holistic and automated approach to discovery, management, and monitoring. Here are six critical steps to secure the lifecycle of non-human identities:
- Discovery & Inventory: Organizations must start by identifying and cataloging all non-human identities across their environments. This includes programmatic credentials stored in vaults, embedded in code, or shared across messaging, or collaboration platforms. It’s not just counting secrets – it’s detecting secrets stored in non-secured locations that could lead to breaches and misuse and mapping all the places where non-human identities are created, stored or exposed.
- Classification: This is the process of categorizing the 1,000+ types of NHIs, taking a long randomized string and adding business context to them, such as which application is using what non-human identity to access what resource and much more. Think of it as putting an AirTag for each one of your NHIs. Security teams need visibility into ownership, permissions, and dependencies to understand how each identity is being used.
- Posture Management: Static risk analysis is crucial to identifying misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. Examples include credentials that have not been rotated, are over-permissioned, or lack proper storage controls.
- Detection and Response (NHIDR): By establishing behavioral baselines for non-human identities, organizations can detect and mitigate threats of your NHIs through real-time abnormal behavior monitoring and analysis of vault and cloud logs. For instance, if a credential is used from an unexpected location (e.g., a country where the organization does not operate), it should immediately trigger an alert or automated response.
- Rotation & Vaulting: Fit into your existing workflows, organizations can automate rotation and make sure all secrets are vaulted, actively enforcing policy compliance.
- Provision & Decommission: Finally, organizations must identify and eliminate stale or unused programmatic credentials, enacting an end-to-end lifecycle control of NHIs. On average, 40% of non-human identities in an environment are unused but remain enabled, posing unnecessary risks.
A Seamless, Out-of-Band Solution
One of the biggest concerns for security leaders is the potential disruption caused by implementing non-human identity management solutions. Any changes to existing workflows must integrate seamlessly with development and operational teams. At Entro Security, we address this challenge by operating out-of-band. This means we monitor, secure, and manage the lifecycle of non-human identities without interfering with existing processes.
By automating the discovery, classification, and monitoring of non-human identities, organizations can gain control over this frequent and hidden attack surface while avoiding disruption. Additionally, our Non-Human Identity Detection and Response (NHDR) capabilities ensure that any deviations from normal NHI behavior are detected in real time, allowing security teams to respond proactively and immediately.
Planning for 2025: Prioritizing Non-Human Identities
As we approach the new year, security leaders must take a proactive stance on non-human identity management. Organizations investing in human identity solutions must recognize that non-human identities often carry greater permissions and higher risk than their human counterparts. Allocating resources to secure these credentials is no longer optional, it is essential.
To help security teams kickstart this process, we at Entro Security offer a free assessment that provides visibility into an organization’s non-human identities. In just 20 minutes, security leaders can understand how many non-humans identities they have, where they are, their usage, and associated risks. This quick assessment is a no-brainer for organizations preparing their security strategies for 2025.
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