Non-Human Identities (NHI): The Hidden Risk in Modern Cybersecurity

Non-human identities have rapidly become the blind spot of modern cybersecurity: they operate silently and outside traditional controls, yet have broad and persistent access. 

 

Attackers are well aware of the vulnerabilities that non-human identities have brought to light: they allow attackers to enter without forcing the front door because they already have the keys.

 

From this perspective, identity management takes center stage in organizational security. Below, we discuss how non-human identities are proliferating and the problems they pose, as well as key strategies for mitigating their risks.

What is a non-human identity?

A non-human identity is any digital credential used to authenticate a machine, service, or application (rather than a person) and grant it access to a resource. This includes various types of identities (API keys, service accounts, tokens, and certificates), all of which allow automated systems to access resources, exchange data, and perform operations without human intervention. 

The growing problem: non-human identities as blind spots

Currently, non-human identities are at the heart of communication between systems (cloud technologies, AI agents, third-party integrations, etc.). However, their uncontrolled proliferation—lacking both oversight and visibility—is causing significant problems.

 

The data paints a worrying picture: in the first half of 2025, non-human identities outnumbered human users by a ratio of 82 to 1, according to CyberArk.

 

This growth amplifies risks because it is not accompanied by the necessary governance. Overwhelmed, organizations are aware of the risk but do not know how to stop it: 77% acknowledge that every undiscovered machine identity is a latent vulnerability, according to CyberArk. And they are not far from the truth: 50% of organizations have suffered breaches linked to non-human identities in the past twelve months, according to NHIMG.

How to mitigate the risks of non-human identities?

NHIs operate in the shadows when they fall outside the scope of identity management: without being integrated into a centralized identity management system, they function without a documented owner, without credential rotation, and without monitoring for anomalous behavior. 

 

In contrast, integrating them into the IAM strategy elevates them to first-class identities—visible and governable—to which the same governance controls apply as to human identities.

 

In practice, this involves real-time detection of exposed secrets and anomalous access patterns, secure storage via vaulting with automatic credential rotation, strict enforcement of the principle of least privilege integrated into Privileged Access Management, and sanitized logs where API keys and tokens are always masked.

The difference between doing it right and doing it halfway lies in whether NHIs are managed from the same platform as other identities or from a standalone tool. When PAM, IGA, and ITDR share the same identity engine, as is the case with Soffid, governance policies are consistently applied to all identities—human and non-human—from a single point of control. No silos. No blind spots.

Is it overwhelming to know that there may be many more machines operating on your network than employees in the office? At Soffid, we turn that complexity into control: we make non-human identities visible and integrate them into daily management so you can govern them from a single point, just like any other critical identity.

At Soffid, we help organizations govern identities by making the complex simple.

Tell us about your environment, and we’ll show you how Soffid approaches non-human identity governance in practice.

Contact our team.