What Are Non-Human Identities?

Non-human identities (NHIs) help software perform tasks without a person signing in every time. They let applications connect to databases, cloud workloads access storage, scripts run scheduled jobs, and APIs exchange data across systems.

While the automation is necessary, the risk comes from how quickly these identities multiply and how hard they can be to track. Unlike employees, contractors, or administrators, NHIs do not join a company, change roles, or leave in obvious ways. A service account, API key, or token can stay active long after its original purpose complete.

Common NHI risks include:

• Unknown ownership: Security teams may not know who created an identity or which team is responsible for it.
• Over-permissioned access: A workload or service account may have more access than it needs.
• Long-lived credentials: API keys, tokens, and secrets may remain valid for months or years.
• Limited monitoring: Machine-to-machine access may blend into normal background activity.
• Orphaned identities: Accounts or credentials may remain active after an application, integration, or project ends.

This is why non-human identities are part of broader identity and access management (IAM) and identity security work: Security teams need to understand not only who has access, but also what has access.

How non-human identities work

A non-human identity works by allowing a system, application, or automated process to prove it’s allowed to access something. Instead of a person entering a username, password, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) code, the non-human identity usually relies on a credential such as a token, certificate, secret, or API key.

The basic access flow

Most NHI activity follows a simple pattern:

1. An application, service, device, or workload needs to perform a task.
2. It presents a credential to another system.
3. The receiving system authenticates the identity.
4. An access policy decides what the identity can do.
5. The identity performs the action, such as reading data, writing to a database, or calling an API.

The important distinction is between authentication and authorization. Authentication confirms the identity is valid, while authorization determines what that identity is allowed to do.

A valid identity can still be risky if it has too much access, uses a credential that is rarely rotated, or isn’t tied to a clear owner.

Where NHIs appear

Non-human identities show up across modern environments, especially where cloud services, automation, and software integrations are common. They may exist in:

• Cloud infrastructure
• CI/CD pipelines
• SaaS applications
• Internal APIs
• Databases
• Containers and workloads
• Internet of Things (IoT) devices
• Security and IT automation tools
• AI agents and bots

Because these identities often operate in the background, they can be harder to govern than human accounts. A user account usually has a person, manager, role, and lifecycle. A non-human identity needs the same level of clarity, but that context is not always documented.

Key types of non-human identities

Service accounts

Service accounts are accounts used by applications, services, or background processes. For example, a reporting tool might use a service account to pull data from a database every night.

Service accounts can become risky when they’re shared across teams, assigned broad permissions, or excluded from normal access reviews.

API keys and tokens

API keys and tokens allow software systems to communicate with each other. They’re common in application integrations, SaaS platforms, and cloud services.

These credentials are useful because they’re simple and flexible, but there’s a catch: They can be copied, stored insecurely, or forgotten. If an attacker obtains a valid API key, they may be able to access data without needing a human password.

Certificates and secrets

Certificates, secrets, and cryptographic keys help systems establish trust. They may be used to encrypt traffic, authenticate services, or support secure communication between workloads.

These credentials need strong storage, rotation, and expiration controls. Without those controls, an old secret can become a quiet path into sensitive systems.

Workload identities

Workload identities are used by cloud workloads, containers, serverless functions, and other compute resources. They help workloads access cloud resources without hardcoding credentials into code.

Workload identities are especially important in cloud workload protection because applications often need temporary, narrowly scoped access to data, storage, or other services.

Bots, scripts, and AI agents

Bots, scripts, and AI agents can perform tasks automatically, from opening tickets to querying systems to taking action based on user requests. As AI agents become more common, their identities and permissions become more important.

An AI agent with broad access may be able to retrieve, modify, or move sensitive data. Treating that agent as a governed identity helps teams set boundaries around what it can access and what actions it can take.

Non-human identity risks and use cases

Cloud workload access

A cloud workload may need to read from storage, write logs, or call another service. A well-scoped workload identity allows that workload to perform its job without using a static credential.

The risk appears when the workload identity has access across too many accounts, environments, or data stores. If that workload is compromised, the attacker may inherit the same access.

CI/CD pipeline automation

Development pipelines often use non-human identities to build, test, and deploy software. These identities may access source code, container registries, secrets, deployment targets, and production environments.

Because pipelines sit close to sensitive systems, their credentials should be tightly governed. A compromised pipeline identity can create a path from development tooling into production infrastructure.

API-to-API communication

Modern applications often rely on API-to-API communication. One application may call a payment service, another may query customer data, and another may trigger a workflow in a SaaS platform.

Each connection depends on trust. API security and NHI security overlap because API keys, tokens, and service identities often determine which systems can communicate and what data they can exchange.

Stale credentials and lateral movement

An old credential may not look dangerous at first. It may belong to a retired integration, a test account, or a service nobody actively manages – attackers look for these gaps.

A valid machine credential can help them move through an environment, access additional systems, or avoid detection because the activity appears to come from a trusted identity. This makes NHI governance relevant to lateral movement and incident response planning.

How non-human identities fit into security operations

Non-human identity security is not a single tool or one-time cleanup project. It’s an operating practice that spans identity, cloud, application, and detection teams.

Security teams usually need to answer a few practical questions:

• What non-human identities exist?
• Who owns each identity?
• What systems can each identity access?
• Which permissions are required?
• How are credentials stored and rotated?
• What activity should trigger investigation?
• When should the identity be disabled or removed?

Governance and access control

Identity governance and administration (IGA) helps teams define ownership, review access, and manage identity lifecycles. For NHIs, this means tying machine identities to an application, business process, team, and responsible owner.

Access control should follow least privilege access (LPA). A service, workload, or bot should only have the permissions it needs to perform its intended task.

Privileged access and secrets

Some NHIs perform sensitive actions, such as deploying code, changing configurations, reading production data, or managing cloud resources. These identities may need privileged access management (PAM) controls, especially when they can make high-impact changes.

Secrets management also matters, as credentials should not be hardcoded in source code, stored in plain text, or shared across teams. They should be stored securely, rotated regularly, and removed when no longer needed.

Monitoring and detection

Non-human identity activity should be monitored for unusual behavior. A service account that suddenly accesses new systems, pulls large amounts of data, or authenticates from an unexpected location may need investigation.

Threat detection for NHIs often focuses on behavior, context, and access patterns. The goal is not to block normal automation, but to spot when trusted machine access starts behaving in a way that does not match its purpose.