Nonhuman identities now outnumber human identities at a ratio of 144 to 1, according to Entro Security’s H1 2025 research, up from 92 to 1 just one year earlier. These machine identities (service accounts, API tokens, automation credentials and AI agents) are the operational backbone of modern infrastructure, yet two in five SaaS platforms fail to distinguish them from human users.
The credentials that power these nonhuman identities (API tokens, OAuth keys and service account passwords) pose risks that differ from human credential risks in ways that matter for security design. Human identities require MFA, behavioral monitoring and session management. Nonhuman identities require granular access scoping, automated lifecycle management and just-in-time credential issuance. When organizations apply the same security model to both, or worse, fail to distinguish between them entirely, they create gaps that attackers exploit. These hidden risks are compounded by the rapid growth of SaaS adoption and AI agent deployment, both of which generate nonhuman identities at a pace and scale that traditional IAM processes were never designed to handle.
What Are Human and Nonhuman Identities?
Human identities are tied to individuals within an organization: employees, contractors or anyone who interacts with systems through human-driven actions. These identities authenticate through usernames, passwords and MFA, and are governed by standard IAM workflows with behavioral analysis and activity logs. When an employee leaves, their account is deactivated through an established offboarding process.
Human identities follow predictable patterns. They log in during business hours, access a known set of applications and generate behavior baselines that security tools can monitor for anomalies.
Nonhuman identities (NHIs) are not tied to a specific individual. They exist to perform automated tasks, integrate systems or access data. These identities include service accounts, workload identities, API tokens, automation scripts and increasingly AI agents. The real risk lies in the static credentials they use, such as API tokens or hardcoded secrets, that can persist long after the workload has been decommissioned.
NHIs behave differently from human identities in every dimension that matters for security. Authentication is programmatic rather than interactive, and operations run around the clock with no concept of “normal hours.” A single NHI can scale from one instance to thousands in seconds. Developers and automation pipelines create these identities rather than HR processes, and NHIs rarely have a defined owner responsible for their lifecycle.
Unlike human accounts, NHIs often persist without regular reviews and can be overpermissioned. Entro’s research found that 97% of NHIs have excessive privileges and 71% are not rotated within recommended timeframes. This makes them prime targets for exploitation when left unmanaged.
Why the Distinction Matters
NHIs operate silently in the background. They are automated, often ephemeral and deeply embedded in production systems. Unlike humans, these identities typically have persistent, high-level access to systems and data without the same visibility, controls or safeguards.
The distinction between human and nonhuman identities matters because the security controls designed for one category actively fail when applied to the other. Human IAM assumes interactive authentication, session management and behavioral baselines. NHIs authenticate programmatically, maintain persistent connections and generate traffic patterns that human-centric security tools were not built to interpret.
When a human account gets locked out, the result is inconvenience. When an NHI loses access, services go down. Engineers and DevOps teams feel it immediately because the failure hits production availability, not a login screen. This operational pressure often leads teams to overprovision NHIs with broad access rather than risk breaking production workflows.
Overpermissioning amplifies risk
NHIs are frequently granted sweeping access without constraints like MFA or behavioral monitoring. These accounts often lack ownership or lifecycle governance, and the result is a broad, often invisible attack surface. Once compromised, an NHI can give attackers direct, unmonitored access to critical systems and data. Because these identities operate continuously and programmatically, traditional security controls rarely catch them in time.
SaaS and identity sprawl
The growth of SaaS platforms and third-party integrations has multiplied the number of identities organizations manage, most of which are not tied to actual people. Every API token, script or automation introduces a new NHI. This leads to identity sprawl: a fast-moving web of unmanaged credentials that expands the blast radius of any breach. OWASP recognized this growing threat by releasing the first-ever Top 10 for Non-Human Identities, a structured framework for identifying and mitigating the biggest NHI risks.
Breach patterns
The inability to differentiate and properly manage NHIs exposes organizations to attacks that can go undetected for weeks. In the 2024 Snowflake breach, cybercriminals used stolen customer login credentials, harvested by infostealer malware and used on accounts without MFA, to infiltrate customer environments. These credentials gave attackers access to customer databases and allowed them to exfiltrate sensitive data while remaining undetected, impacting over 165 organizations.
Best Practices for Managing Human and Nonhuman Identities
To mitigate these risks, organizations need a clear strategy for differentiating and securely managing both identity types.
1) Classify and segment identities
Establish clear definitions for human and nonhuman identities within your identity management system. Separate NHIs from human users and assign specific roles and permissions based on function. Use automated systems to tag and label identities by type and regularly audit these classifications. Many organizations discover during their first audit that NHIs far outnumber what they expected, particularly across SaaS integrations where third-party apps create service accounts automatically.
2) Apply granular access control
Limit NHI permissions based on their specific tasks. A token used for reading data from a database should not have permissions to modify or delete it. Use real-time policy enforcement to adjust access based on workload context, such as location, time of day or security posture. This dynamic approach replaces the common pattern of granting broad permissions at provisioning time and never revisiting them.
3) Monitor and audit continuously
Implement continuous monitoring to track both human and nonhuman identity activity. Standard SIEM tools designed for human behavior often miss NHI anomalies because machine-to-machine traffic looks different from human login patterns. Look for signals like NHIs accessing resources outside their normal scope, credential usage from unexpected locations or sudden spikes in API call volume. Maintain detailed logs of all NHI activity, including token usage, API requests and service interactions. Review these logs regularly to detect anomalies or signs of compromise.
4) Automate lifecycle management
Automate the provisioning and deprovisioning of NHIs to ensure identities are created, updated and deactivated as needed. This reduces the risk of orphaned or forgotten credentials that persist long after their purpose has ended. Entro’s research found that nearly half of NHIs are over a year old and 7.5% are between five and ten years old, often outliving the developers who created them. Without automated lifecycle policies, these accounts quietly retain access and expand the attack surface over time.
5) Strengthen authentication
Traditional MFA cannot be directly applied to NHIs. However, you can implement real-time, identity- and posture-aware policy enforcement that functions as “MFA for machines.” This approach continuously validates NHIs based on their context, behavior and risk posture when interacting with sensitive systems. Rather than relying on a static credential that works indefinitely, the system evaluates whether the workload should have access at the moment of each request.
For token management, prioritize removing long-lived credentials altogether over rotating them on a schedule. Where rotation is still necessary, enforce strict expiration policies and automate revocation to minimize the exposure window. The goal is to move toward secretless authentication where workloads prove their identity through environment attestation rather than stored credentials.
6) Collaborate with SaaS providers
Work closely with third-party vendors to ensure they distinguish between human and nonhuman identities and that proper identity controls are in place. Conduct regular security assessments of vendor identity management practices to confirm their controls meet your organization’s standards. As Aembit CTO Kevin Sapp emphasized in his open letter to API vendors, API vendors must adopt more secure authentication methods like workload identity federation rather than relying on static API keys.
Building an Identity-First Security Strategy
Managing nonhuman identities is following a trajectory similar to the one human IAM took years ago, but progressing faster due to the growth of automation, API integrations, SaaS platforms and AI agents. The OWASP NHI Top 10, emerging regulations like PCI DSS 4.0 and growing board-level attention to NHI governance all signal that this space is maturing rapidly.
The path forward starts with securing the nonhuman identities you already know are sensitive rather than waiting for a full discovery exercise. You already know which workloads access your most critical databases and APIs. Protect those access paths first with identity-based authentication and just-in-time credentials, then expand your coverage as you build inventory.
Aembit provides workload IAM that treats nonhuman identities as first-class citizens, with environment-based attestation, just-in-time credential injection and policy-driven access management across AWS, Azure, GCP and SaaS platforms.
