By Kiersten Putnam | Trace3 Senior Innovation Researcher
Non-human identities (NHI) have been a key component in the identity space for quite some time. In fact, when addressing the recent surge in identity-based attacks, our Innovation team included NHI as an important identity fundamental, alongside those components for human identities. However, even though NHIs are important, the human identity use cases seem to have received greater inquiry and attention from the enterprise…think passwordless, identity threat detection and response (ITDR), just-in-time authorization. While these use cases have been getting the spotlight, NHIs have been off to the side, strengthening in numbers and proving to us that they simply cannot be ignored any longer.
Let’s take a closer look at the evidence proving just how critical NHIs have become.
1. NHIs Outnumber Humans
Most organizations who conduct a full discovery of their NHIs are reporting that they outnumber their human identities by 25x-50x. How can this be? Well, for one, there are so many different types of NHIs- API keys, tokens, service accounts, secrets, certificates, admin accounts, etc. And secondly, the increasing number of cloud-native applications, API-first architectures, and the initial rollouts of AI agents, are naturally increasing the amount of non-human identities.
2. NHIs as the New Attack Frontier
Looking back at 2024, there were many notable breaches all stemming from stolen cryptographic keys, exposed credentials, authentication vulnerabilities, and other serious NHI attack pathways. Additionally, one in five organizations reported experiencing a security incident related to NHIs. Unfortunately, this track record has created a strong momentum for NHI attacks and is likely to continue rising into 2025.
3. The Next Wave of NHIs
While any adoption of NHIs is reason enough to start having the NHI conversation, let’s narrow in on the recent buzz which is creating this wave of attention- AI agents. Many organizations are considering what use cases AI agents can solve in their organization, if their data is ready, security measures in place… but maybe the first immediate consideration isn’t “what identities will these agents have?” While some agents will take on the permissions of the human (like in personal assistant use cases), for enterprise use cases (scanning logs, processing data, automating workflows), it is likely the agents will require their own identities for interacting with enterprise systems and human users. And this is where those organizations that have not addressed NHIs will start to see the elephant in the room. Seemingly overnight the amount of NHIs will dramatically increase.
So, now that I’ve grabbed your attention, I think it’s fair to say that 2025 is the time for NHIs to be brought into the spotlight.
Bringing Order to the NHI Sprawl
I’m sure you’re now wondering how this NHI surge relates to your organization. We recognize NHI security isn’t new- many organizations have been managing both their human and non-human identities through different procedures for quite some time. However, with such an expansive NHI ecosystem, organizations have typically managed NHIs in silos, focusing on individual security tasks. They might have procedures for rotating secrets, assigning permissions, managing API keys, etc. but haven’t had a way to ensure all NHIs are managed consistently and to best practices- a centralized governance layer, if you will. So, it isn’t surprising that this centralized governance layer is the hot topic driving the innovation in NHI security. When looking for centralized governance, the natural place to start is with getting a clear picture of all the NHIs you have by type, owner, and policies they follow. Without this full picture, it is very difficult to ensure strong consistent hygiene without gaps. Once this visibility is achieved, this is when you can get a full understanding of your NHI posture management. This will answer questions like- do you have privilege creep? Overprovisioned accounts? Shadow identities?
While it can sound overwhelming to begin, this governance effort establishes centralized oversight for all existing identities, while setting the foundation for best practices in managing future NHIs.
The Market’s Response: Unifying the NHI Landscape
Given this central governance trend, it isn’t surprising that the market is responding with a variety of emerging solutions providing flavors of NHI governance. However, when considering adoption, this doesn’t mean that the other components of NHI security are no longer important. What we are seeing is an opportunity to create an integrated system where the governance layer provides the visibility and policy recommendations, and the others enforce security controls. As such, we are seeing solutions integrate across these layers, playing distinct roles in securing NHI and working together to bring control to the identity landscape.
Let’s dive into the disciplines:
As mentioned above, governance and risk management solutions serve as the visibility and oversight layer, ensuring that all NHIs are discovered, tracked, and continuously evaluated against security policies. They assess identity hygiene, privilege creep, and policy violations, providing a risk-based framework for managing NHIs across their lifecycle.
From the enforcement side, Authentication & Authorization solutions ensure NHIs can verify their identity and securely access systems based on policy-driven controls, such as workload authentication (OAuth, JWT, mTLS) and machine-to-machine access control (RBAC, ABAC, zero-trust models), to reduce attack surfaces and enforce least-privilege principles. Finally, Secrets & Credential Security address the management and protection of sensitive credentials, including API keys, certificates, and tokens. Solutions in this space focus on secrets discovery, vaulting, automated rotation, and real-time anomaly detection to prevent unauthorized access.
From this landscape, it’s clear that each discipline plays a distinct yet essential role in NHI security. As solutions continue to evolve, they are developing unique differentiators that set them apart. Some platforms offer broad NHI coverage, spanning multiple identity types, while others specialize in specific NHI categories. Additionally, we are seeing a natural progression where enforcement-layer solutions—focused on authentication, authorization, and credential security—are beginning to integrate visibility and posture management capabilities from the governance layer, further unifying the NHI security ecosystem.
Putting This Into Practice
There are important elements to consider when strengthening your organization’s NHI security practice. While traditionally solutions have been specialized by certain NHI types and use cases, the resurgence of NHI security is driven by the need for centralized governance. In evaluating your solution sets, it is crucial to consider solutions that current meet your organizations NHI needs, while also scaling for the future. Even with the right tools in place, NHI security will become an ongoing practice, requiring continuous monitoring, posture assessments, and policy refinement. Strengthening your NHI governance isn’t just about filling gaps today; it’s about building a resilient security framework that evolves alongside new threats and emerging identity challenges.
Kiersten Putnam is a Senior Innovation Researcher at Trace3. She is passionate about new innovative approaches that challenge traditional processes across the enterprise. As a member of the Innovation Team, she delivers research content on emerging trends and solutions across enterprise cloud, security, data, and infrastructure. When she's not researching, she is either exploring the surrounding areas of Denver, Colorado where she lives, or planning her next trip abroad.