Non-Human Identities have become a critical element of modern enterprises consisting of product/platform and IT infrastructure, applications and services. However, they remain one of the most overlooked aspects of cybersecurity. Unlike human identities, NHIs are decentralized and managed across disparate environments—both cloud and on-premises—making them inherently challenging to monitor and control. Their proliferation is accelerating due to the adoption of advanced technologies like Infrastructure as Code (IaC), distributed architectures, microservices, and the rise of GenAI and autonomous agents, which create NHIs at an unprecedented scale. 

Compounding this issue, existing security controls for NHIs lack fundamental safeguards such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or Single Sign On (SSO), leaving them far less secure than their human counterparts. Additionally, operational challenges such as lack of ownership, no clear accountability, and an inability for security teams to enforce policies make managing NHIs even more complex. In short, whereas it took a while for us to implement some aspects of full identity lifecycle management for human identities, no such thing exists for NHIs. Furthermore, these identities often come with excessive permissions, creating an expansive and highly attractive attack surface for adversaries. As enterprises continue to create more NHI's, attackers will increase their targeting of those accounts, and do so at scale. This represents an emerging attack surface which existing controls fail to address. This is evident given the rise in breaches that have spawned from mismanaged NHIs, with nearly 1 in 5 organizations having experienced an NHI-related security incident, according to the Cloud Security Alliance.