What Are Non-Human Identities? Challenges and Best Practices

Non-human identities (NHIs) power automation, cloud services, and DevOps workflows for many organizations. These digital entities enable seamless system interactions and even outnumber human identities in some cases.

But NHIs often lack visibility and operate with excessive privileges. Without proper security controls, they become prime targets for attackers, who exploit misconfigurations, exposed secrets, and overprivileged access.

Managing NHIs effectively requires specialized security strategies to reduce risk and maintain control. Here’s a guide to what NHI means and how to protect NHIs within your organization.

What Is a Non-Human Identity?

An NHI is a digital credential that applications, automated scripts, and cloud services use to authenticate and interact with systems without human involvement. Unlike human identities, which are tied to individuals, NHIs function autonomously, allowing systems to exchange data and execute workflows.

These identities are common practice for cloud and DevOps environments, but when mismanaged, they create security gaps. Poorly secured NHIs—such as those with hardcoded API keys or unrestricted access—are a common target for attackers.

Non-Human Identities Vs. Human Identities

The core difference between human identities and NHIs is how they authenticate and interact with systems.

Human identities belong to individuals who log in and verify credentials. They’re protected by security measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and password policies. In contrast, NHIs operate autonomously, often with broader and more persistent access than human users.

Unlike human identities, NHIs often lack expiration dates, centralized management, or proper oversight. If an NHI is compromised, attackers can exploit it to move laterally across environments.

6 Types of Non-Human Identities

Let’s examine six types of NHIs, breaking down their roles, security risks, and why they require careful management:

1. API Keys

API keys are authentication mechanisms that allow applications, microservices, and third-party services to communicate. But attackers frequently scan repositories for exposed or hardcoded API keys, exploiting them to gain unauthorized access to cloud services and sensitive data. A strong secrets management strategy prevents exposure, and you should prioritize detecting and mitigating leaked credentials with a dedicated secrets scanner.

2. Service Accounts

Service accounts are automated identities that authenticate applications and services, often with highly privileged access. Without strict governance, these accounts can accumulate excessive permissions, increasing the risk of privilege escalation attacks.

3. Cloud Services and Workloads

Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud rely on NHIs to manage access between cloud services. These identities automate provisioning, scaling, and infrastructure operations but often suffer from misconfigurations or overly permissive policies, creating security gaps. Attackers exploit weak identity controls to escalate privileges and gain unauthorized access, making least-privilege enforcement and continuous access reviews important steps.

4. CI/CD Pipelines and DevOps Tools

CI/CD pipelines —like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and GitLab Runners—use NHIs to automate software deployment. Still, insecure configurations and exposed credentials can allow attackers to inject malicious code or hijack workflows. Security teams must enforce strict access controls, secure secrets management, and regular pipeline audits to prevent unauthorized access.

5. Robotic Process Automation Bots

Robotic process automation (RPA) bots automate repetitive business processes like financial transactions, IT operations, and data handling. These bots require NHIs to interact with enterprise applications, often with high privileges that make them attractive targets. An attacker could manipulate transactions, extract sensitive data, or disrupt operations if compromised.

6. Software Supply Chain Components

NHIs also play a role in software supply chains, where container images, code libraries, and third-party integrations rely on machine-to-machine authentication. Supply chain attacks—such as injecting malicious code into trusted dependencies—are becoming more frequent. Securing these components requires proactive monitoring and strong verification processes at every stage of development.

Challenges of Non-Human Identities

Managing NHIs presents security challenges that go beyond traditional identity management. Let’s explore the underlying challenges you may face when securing NHI—and why conventional identity management strategies fall short:

• Limited visibility and tracking: NHIs exist dynamically across cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps workflows. They often lack centralized oversight, leading to shadow NHIs—identities that exist but aren’t properly tracked or monitored. Assessing which NHIs have access to what systems is complex without complete visibility.
• Privilege creep and excessive access: Many NHIs operate with broad, persistent permissions that don’t receive regular review. Improper NHI security can lead to privilege creep, where an identity accumulates unnecessary access and increases the attack surface. Without proper governance, attackers can exploit overprivileged NHIs to escalate access.
• Weak secrets management: NHIs authenticate using API keys, tokens, and certificates, but organizations often struggle with secrets sprawl. This happens when credentials are hardcoded, stored in plaintext, or left exposed in repositories. Attackers target these weak spots to breach systems and move across environments.
• Lack of lifecycle governance: Developers frequently create NHIs for temporary use and forget to decommission them. Without automated lifecycle management, these identities—known as orphaned NHIs—provide an attacker with hidden entry points into the infrastructure.
• Absence of traditional security controls: NHIs, unlike human identities, can’t use MFA or behavioral monitoring. Instead, they rely on policies like least privilege enforcement, continuous monitoring, and automated credential rotation. If you don’t apply these controls, you leave NHIs vulnerable to exploitation.

Best Practices for Non-Human Identity Management

Effective NHI management requires strong authentication controls, least privilege enforcement, and continuous monitoring to prevent security gaps. Below are key best practices you should implement to manage this effectively:

Secure Credential Management

NHIs authenticate using API keys, service account credentials, and cryptographic tokens, but poor credential hygiene—such as hardcoded secrets or plaintext storage—makes them easy targets for attackers. To reduce risk, you should:

• Store credentials securely in a dedicated secrets management system rather than embedding them in code or config files
• Implement automated credential rotation to prevent long-lived secrets from being exploited
• Restrict access to credentials based on the principle of least privilege, giving NHIs only the permissions they need

Comprehensive Secrets Visibility

Managing NHIs at scale requires complete visibility into where secrets are stored, how they’re used, and who (or what) has access to them. Without a centralized inventory, you risk secrets sprawl. Best practices include:

• Maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all NHIs and their associated secrets
• Regularly scanning for exposed secrets in repositories such as GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud environments
• Enforcing real-time monitoring to detect unauthorized access or suspicious credential use

Stronger Authentication

Since NHIs can’t use MFA like human users, they require alternative authentication mechanisms to enhance security. You should:

• Replace static credentials with short-lived, just-in-time (JIT) tokens to minimize exposure risks
• Use certificate-based authentication instead of API keys, as certificates offer stronger cryptographic validation
• Enforce mutual authentication between services to prevent unauthorized NHIs from accessing critical systems

Least Privilege and Access Controls

Many NHIs operate with excessive permissions, increasing the risk of lateral movement and privilege escalation if compromised. To prevent this:

• Adopt a zero-trust approach, verifying every request before granting access
• Use role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) to fine-tune permissions
• Regularly review and remove unnecessary privileges from NHIs to prevent privilege creep

Lifecycle Management and Decommissioning

Orphaned NHIs pose security risks if they retain access to sensitive systems. Best practices include:

• Automating identity lifecycle management to create, rotate, and revoke NHIs as needed
• Implementing expiration policies to prevent long-lived NHIs from accumulating excessive access
• Monitoring inactive NHIs and removing those that are no longer required

Continuous Monitoring and Threat Detection

Since NHIs lack human oversight, organizations need automated security controls to detect anomalous behavior or unauthorized access attempts. This includes:

• Logging and monitoring all NHI activity to track how identities interact with systems
• Using anomaly detection and behavioral analytics to flag suspicious activities, such as NHIs suddenly accessing new environments
• Integrating NHIs into incident response plans ensures rapid action if an identity is compromised

Securing Non-Human Identities With Legit Security

Effectively managing NHIs helps prevent unauthorized access, privilege escalation, and security breaches. And that starts with effective secrets scanning.

Legit Security’s AI-powered tools take secrets scanning to the next level. It provides enterprise-grade performance, giving you the visibility, prevention, and remediation capabilities you need to secure secrets across the entire development lifecycle. Whether you’re protecting passwords or NHIs, Legit Security safeguards them from start to finish. Request a demo.