Non-Human Identity Exposure: Risks, Realities, and Remediation

Understanding the Non-Human Identity Exposure Problem

Are your non-human identities (NHIs) leaving your organization exposed? It's a critical question, as these often-overlooked entities are a growing security blind spot.

NHIs, such as api keys, service accounts, and other programmatic credentials, enable essential automation but can become prime targets for attackers if not properly managed. The explosive growth of NHIs means that for every human employee, there are, on average, 92 non-human identities (The Three Elements of Non‑Human Identities - Entro Security).

• Discovery and Inventory Challenges are scattered across various systems, making it difficult for security teams to maintain an accurate inventory. Without this foundation, identifying and remediating risks becomes nearly impossible.
• Business Dependency Concerns: Organizations heavily rely on NHIs for seamless operations. Security teams often hesitate to take action on risky credentials for fear of disrupting critical business processes.
• Lack of Context: NHIs are typically long, randomized strings, making it difficult to determine their human ownership, permissions, and purpose, further complicating management efforts.

A non-human identity breach can be catastrophic and often go undetected for extended periods. Unlike human identity breaches, which may trigger obvious signs of compromise, the lack of inventory and security monitoring for NHIs allows attackers to operate undetected for months. The LastPass breach, for example, started with an exposed non-human identity.

Once an NHI is exposed, it takes barely two minutes for any hope of containing the breach to be lost.

Attackers can use exposed NHIs to escalate privileges, move laterally within the network, and exfiltrate sensitive data. This persistence allows adversaries to cause significant damage before being detected.

Understanding why NHIs are so vulnerable is critical to addressing this growing threat. In the next section, we'll delve into the specific factors that make NHIs prime targets for exploitation.

Realities of NHI Exposure

Let's get real about what NHI exposure actually looks like in the wild. It's not just about theoretical risks; it's about the tangible ways attackers exploit these weaknesses.

• Common Attack Vectors: Attackers often target NHIs through common vulnerabilities like hardcoded credentials in code repositories, misconfigured cloud services, or even phishing attacks aimed at developers who manage these identities. For instance, a developer might accidentally commit an api key to a public GitHub repository, immediately exposing it to anyone scanning for such secrets.
• Impact Scenarios: The impact of NHI exposure can range from minor data leaks to complete system compromise. Imagine a service account with broad access to a customer database being used to exfiltrate personal identifiable information (PII) for identity theft. Or consider an api key for an IoT device being used to gain unauthorized access to a manufacturing plant's control systems, potentially causing physical disruption.
• The "Set it and Forget it" Problem: A significant reality is that NHIs are often created for a specific purpose and then forgotten. They remain active, often with elevated privileges, long after their original use case has ended or the associated employee has left the company. This creates a vast attack surface of dormant but still potent credentials.

Why Are NHIs So Vulnerable?

Did you know that NHIs are often left unpatched for twice as long as human identities, making them sitting ducks for cyberattacks? So, what makes these digital entities so appealing to malicious actors?

• Lack of Visibility and Monitoring: NHIs often operate in the shadows. Unlike human users, these identities aren't always actively monitored, creating a blind spot for security teams. For example, a compromised api key used by a data analytics tool might go unnoticed for weeks, allowing attackers to exfiltrate sensitive customer data. Without proper non-human identity detection and response (NHIDR), organizations struggle to identify anomalies.
• Excessive Permissions: NHIs are frequently granted overly broad permissions, escalating the potential damage from a breach. A service account with write access to an entire cloud storage bucket, for instance, could enable an attacker to wipe out critical backups or inject malicious code. According to The Hacker News, leaked credentials often have excessive permissions.
• Inadequate Rotation and Management: Many organizations fail to rotate NHI credentials regularly, leading to long-lived secrets that are easily compromised. A GitGuardian's State of Secrets Sprawl report for 2025 reveals that 70% of secrets detected in public repositories in 2022 were still active, highlighting a systemic failure in credential management.
• AI-Driven Vulnerabilities: The rise of ai coding assistants like GitHub Copilot can inadvertently worsen the problem. The Hacker News reports that repositories using Copilot have a 40% higher incidence rate of secret leaks, suggesting that ai might encourage developers to prioritize speed over security. This happens because ai tools can auto-complete code with sensitive data, or generate code snippets that lack explicit security checks, making it easier for developers to inadvertently embed secrets or create insecure configurations without realizing it.

Imagine a healthcare provider using NHIs to automate data transfers between medical devices and patient records. If these NHIs aren't properly secured, attackers could potentially access and manipulate sensitive health information. Similarly, in the financial sector, exposed NHIs could enable unauthorized access to trading platforms or customer accounts.

As mentioned earlier, NHIs are crucial for automation, but their inherent vulnerabilities make them attractive targets. By understanding these weaknesses, security teams can begin to implement robust strategies to protect these critical assets. We'll explore common sources of NHI exposure in the next section.

Common Sources of Non-Human Identity Exposure

Is your organization inadvertently broadcasting its NHI secrets? Understanding the common sources of non-human identity exposure is the first step in securing your digital infrastructure. Let's explore some frequent culprits.

• Code Repositories: Developers often embed credentials directly in code, especially during testing or quick deployments. These secrets can easily end up in version control systems like GitHub, creating a significant exposure risk. Even private repositories aren't immune; The Hacker News reported that private repositories are approximately 8 times more likely to contain secrets than public ones.
• Configuration Files: Cloud environments rely heavily on configuration files to define infrastructure settings. However, these files often contain sensitive information like api keys and database passwords. According to Oasis Security Research Team, users of popular apps such as ChatGPT, Slack, Trello, and ClickUp can expose their entire OneDrive. This happens because these applications might use OneDrive as a backend for file storage or sharing, and a flaw in how they interact with OneDrive's file picker could inadvertently expose all connected files, including those containing NHIs.
• Collaboration Platforms: Communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams have become fertile grounds for secret sprawl. Developers and operations teams frequently share credentials and configuration snippets through these channels, creating a trail of exposed NHIs.
• Unsecured Vaults: Many organizations use secrets management solutions, but misconfigured or poorly managed vaults can still lead to exposure. For example, if access controls aren't properly enforced, unauthorized users might gain access to sensitive credentials.
• Inadequate Offboarding Processes: When employees leave or change roles, organizations often fail to revoke NHIs associated with their accounts. These orphaned credentials can linger indefinitely, providing attackers with a backdoor into critical systems. As Marta Dern notes on Oasis Security Blog, employee offboarding often exposes NHIs by leaving behind active service accounts or api keys that are no longer monitored or managed.

Consider a retail company automating inventory updates via api calls to a third-party logistics provider. If the api key is hardcoded into the application and pushed to a public repository, attackers could potentially access and manipulate inventory data. Similarly, a healthcare provider using NHIs to access patient records could inadvertently expose those credentials through unsecured configuration files, leading to a data breach.

Identifying these common sources is paramount. We will discover key strategies for non-human identity management (NHIM) in the next section.

Key Strategies for Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM)

Securing non-human identities (NHIs) can feel like finding a needle in a haystack, but with the right strategies, you can transform this challenge into a manageable process. Let's dive into some key strategies for effective NHIM.

• Discovery and Inventory: Start by pinpointing all NHIs across your IT ecosystem. This foundational step is crucial. For instance, a retail company might discover hundreds of api keys, service accounts, and database credentials scattered across its cloud environments, code repositories, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Classification and Contextualization: Once discovered, categorize your NHIs to understand their purpose and associated risks. For example, a healthcare organization could classify NHIs based on the systems they access (e.g., patient records, billing systems) and the permissions they hold (e.g., read-only, write access). This classification is important because it directly informs risk management. A read-only NHI to patient records, for instance, might be considered lower risk than a write-access NHI to billing systems, allowing security teams to prioritize remediation efforts more effectively.
• Posture Management: Conduct static risk analysis to identify vulnerabilities. This includes flagging credentials that haven't been rotated, are over-permissioned, or lack proper storage controls. A financial institution might identify service accounts with excessive privileges that could enable unauthorized access to sensitive customer data.
• Detection and Response: Establishing behavioral baselines for NHIs helps detect and mitigate threats in real-time. For example, if an api key used by a marketing automation tool suddenly starts making requests from an unusual geographic location, it could signal a compromise. Real-time abnormal behavior monitoring and analysis of vault and cloud logs is key.
• Rotation and Vaulting: Automate credential rotation and ensure all secrets are securely vaulted. Enforce policy compliance to prevent secrets sprawl. A manufacturing firm could implement automated rotation for api keys used by its IoT devices, minimizing the risk of long-lived credentials being compromised.
• Provisioning and Decommissioning: Streamline the process of providing and revoking NHI access, eliminating stale or unused credentials. A significant percentage of NHIs in an environment are often unused but remain enabled, posing unnecessary risks.

By implementing these strategies, organizations can significantly reduce their NHI exposure and improve their overall security posture. In the next section, we'll explore advanced NHIM practices to further enhance your security efforts.

Advanced NHIM Practices

Is your NHIM program ready to level up? Let's explore advanced practices that can significantly enhance your organization's security posture beyond the foundational strategies discussed earlier.

Move beyond basic risk assessments by incorporating contextual data. This involves analyzing factors like the NHI's access patterns, the sensitivity of the data it touches, and the potential business impact of a compromise. For example, a high-risk score might be assigned to an api key used by a critical payment processing service that hasn't been rotated in 90 days and has write access to customer financial data.

• Behavioral Analytics: Establish baselines for NHI activity and detect anomalies. For instance, if a service account typically accesses databases within a specific region but suddenly starts making requests from a different country, it could indicate a compromise. Real-time abnormal behavior monitoring and analysis of vault and cloud logs is key.
• Threat Intelligence Integration: Incorporate threat intelligence feeds to identify NHIs that may be associated with known malicious actors or compromised infrastructure. A manufacturing firm might use this to flag service accounts communicating with suspicious ip addresses linked to industrial espionage campaigns.
• Just-In-Time (JIT) Access: Implement JIT access to grant NHIs temporary, privileged access only when needed. This minimizes the attack surface by limiting the window of opportunity for attackers to exploit compromised credentials. For NHIs, determining the "need" often involves predefined triggers or manual approvals based on specific operational requirements, and access is granted through secure, short-lived tokens that are automatically revoked after a set period or when the task is completed.
• Dynamic Provisioning: Automate the process of providing and revoking NHI access based on pre-defined policies. A cloud service provider could use dynamic provisioning to grant a service account temporary access to a specific resource for a limited time, after which the access is automatically revoked.

Establish automated workflows to respond to security incidents involving NHIs. This includes automatically rotating credentials, revoking access, and isolating affected systems.

• Policy-Based Enforcement: Define policies that automatically trigger remediation actions based on detected risks. For example, if an api key is detected in a public code repository, a policy could automatically rotate the credential, notify the security team, and quarantine the affected application. Quarantining an application in this context typically means isolating it from the network or restricting its access to critical resources, preventing further potential damage or data exfiltration while the incident is investigated.

These advanced practices require a combination of robust tooling, well-defined policies, and close collaboration between security, development, and operations teams. By implementing these strategies, organizations can significantly reduce their NHI exposure and improve their overall security posture.

Now that we've explored advanced NHIM practices, let's discuss how to implement NHIM seamlessly within your organization.

Implementing NHIM Seamlessly

Implementing Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) doesn't have to be a disruptive overhaul. In fact, the most successful implementations are those that integrate seamlessly with existing workflows, minimizing friction and maximizing adoption.

One of the most effective approaches to seamless NHIM is out-of-band monitoring. This involves monitoring, securing, and managing NHIs without interfering with existing processes. Think of it as adding a security layer that works behind the scenes, providing visibility and control without disrupting developers or operations teams.

• Automated Discovery: Continuous scanning of code repositories, cloud environments, and collaboration platforms ensures comprehensive NHI visibility. This eliminates the need for manual inventories, which are often outdated and incomplete. Tools like secret scanners and cloud configuration analysis platforms are typically used for this continuous scanning.
• Real-time Anomaly Detection: Establishing behavioral baselines for NHIs and flagging unusual activity enables proactive threat detection. For instance, if a service account suddenly attempts to access resources outside its normal scope, it triggers an alert.

Successful NHIM implementation also relies on streamlined provisioning and decommissioning workflows. This ensures that NHIs are created and revoked according to policy, preventing the accumulation of stale credentials.

• Automated Provisioning: Integrating NHIM with existing CI/CD pipelines allows for automated credential provisioning during application deployments. This eliminates the need for developers to manually create and manage secrets, reducing the risk of human error. Typical integration points include webhooks in CI/CD tools or api calls to secrets management systems.
• Policy-Based Enforcement: Defining policies that automatically trigger remediation actions when risks are detected. As an example, if an api key is detected in a public code repository, a policy could automatically rotate the credential, notify the security team, and quarantine the affected application.

It's also crucial to consider the ethical implications of NHIM. Overly restrictive policies can hinder innovation and disrupt critical business processes. Transparency and communication are key to building trust and ensuring that NHIM efforts are aligned with organizational goals. For example, a good practice is to clearly communicate to development teams why certain NHI access controls are being implemented and how they benefit the overall security posture without unduly impeding their work.

Implementing NHIM seamlessly requires a combination of robust tooling, well-defined policies, and a collaborative approach. By focusing on out-of-band monitoring and streamlined workflows, organizations can secure their NHIs without disrupting business operations.

Now, let's explore the future of NHIM and how ai is poised to revolutionize this critical area of cybersecurity.