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Key Takeaways on Non-Human Identity Security from Gartner’s PAM Report

Managing privileged access has long been about controlling which employees get elevated permissions inside an organization. But with the explosion of non-human identities – like workloads, applications, APIs, and databases – it’s not just a people-focused exercise anymore.

Gartner’s recently published 2024 Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management (PAM) highlights this shift, showing how PAM vendors are beginning to address the growing need to secure both human and non-human identities.

Non-human identities now far outnumber human users in many organizations as they adopt cloud-native architectures and scale across multi-cloud environments. 

Traditionally, PAM tools focused on human access, but Gartner’s report emphasizes the need to manage privileged access for non-human identities as well. These identities often require real-time, just-in-time authentication, and their transient nature demands a more dynamic security approach than static credential management can offer.

 However, while PAM tools are evolving to address non-human identity management, they often struggle to keep up with the highly dynamic and ephemeral nature of modern workloads. These non-human entities require granular, context-aware controls that traditional PAM solutions weren’t designed to handle.

As organizations continue to scale and rely on automation, containerized environments, and multi-cloud strategies, managing privileged access for both workloads and other non-human identities becomes a key security challenge. Gartner’s insights show that while PAM tools are making progress, there is still a gap in fully addressing the unique demands of non-human identity security.

The Role of Privileged Access in Securing Workload Identities

Historically, PAM vendors have designed their solutions to manage and control elevated access for human users – ensuring that administrators, DevOps engineers, and system operators can securely access critical systems. While PAM remains essential for managing human identities, its limitations become evident when applied to non-human identities, particularly in cloud-native environments.

The explosion of automation, CI/CD jobs and actions, and containerized workloads has led to a surge in non-human access needed to services like databases, APIs, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. While these identities require secure access to critical infrastructure, they have characteristics different from those of traditional human users.

  • Humans rely on passwords, typically using long-lived credentials they remember for authentication. In contrast, workloads are transient and highly dynamic, requiring identities and credentials to be generated and assigned only at runtime.
  • Traditional multifactor authentication (MFA) does not apply. Time-based one-time password (TOTP) authenticators and SMS and email verification are not designed for workload-to-workload scenarios and don’t work without human interaction (aka a “human in the loop.”)

Where Traditional PAM Falls Short in NHI Scenarios

While traditional PAM tools have expanded to cover some aspects of non-human identity management, they still struggle with the unique challenges posed by workloads and services. Many conventional solutions rely on secrets management to secure non-human identities, storing credentials like API keys and tokens in secure vaults. However, this approach is insufficient in today’s cloud-oriented dynamic environments.

Secrets Management Alone Is Insufficient for Modern Workload IAM

Secrets management, while functional, offers a static approach to a problem that demands a dynamic solution. In a cloud-native world, workloads are often temporary and spun up and down based on demand. Their access needs are transient, and manually retrieving credentials from a vault does not address who or what gets access in real-time or for how long.

For example, in a microservices architecture, workloads may need to authenticate and interact with multiple services quickly. Traditional secrets management tools focus on securely storing credentials but do not provide the intent-based, real-time control required to manage access. That leaves gaps in policy enforcement and fails to consider the context in which access should be granted.

Granular Access Controls for Workloads Are Lacking

Traditional PAM solutions excel at managing human sessions and privileged user roles, but they often lack the ability to apply fine-grained access controls to non-human identities. Workloads and serverless functions, for instance, may only need access to a resource for seconds or minutes at a time, but traditional tools are not agile enough to handle such short-lived access needs.

Without the ability to apply just-in-time access and fine-grained policies, workloads risk accumulating excessive privileges, increasing the attack surface and the likelihood of privilege escalation.

Fragmented Access Policies Across Multi-Cloud Environments

Organizations adopting multi-cloud strategies deploy workloads across multiple cloud providers and on-premises environments. Traditional PAM solutions, designed for more static infrastructure, often struggle to apply consistent access controls across these disparate environments. That leads to fragmented policies and inconsistent enforcement, making it difficult for security teams to see who or what is accessing critical infrastructure.

Workload IAM as the Cornerstone of Securing Non-Human Identities

Securing non-human identities requires an approach that goes beyond traditional PAM tools, which primarily focus on managing human privileged access. Workload identity and access management (IAM) offers dynamic, real-time access controls specifically designed for non-human entities like workloads, services, and APIs.

Dynamic, Secretless Authentication for Workloads

Workload IAM provides secretless authentication, removing the need for workloads to retrieve or store static credentials like API keys or tokens. Instead, itdynamically injects credentials when needed, authenticating workloads in real-time based on pre-defined security policies.

This approach ensures that workloads are granted access only when necessary, significantly reducing the attack surface by preventing credential exposure and unauthorized access.

Just-in-Time Access for Workloads

Just-in-time access is another key feature of workload IAM, granting workloads temporary permissions only when needed.  This helps ensure that access grants are tightly controlled and do not accumulate over time. This real-time, policy-driven access minimizes the risk of credential leakage and misuse.

Cross-Environment Workload Management

As organizations deploy workloads across multiple cloud providers, cross-environment workload identity management allows security teams to enforce consistent policies across cloud and on-premise environments. Whether workloads are running on AWS, Azure, GCP, or are on-premises, workload IAM provides centralized control and visibility over what is accessing critical resources.

By eliminating fragmented policies and applying consistent enforcement across all environments, this helps security teams reduce risk and maintain control, no matter where their workloads run.

Conditional Access Controls for Workloads

Conditional access controls, meanwhile, enhance security by adapting to the context of each access request. By integrating, for example, with security platforms like CrowdStrike and Wiz, workload IAM can assess the security posture of a device or workload and make intelligent access decisions based on real-time security data.

For instance, if a virtual machine-based workload is flagged as compromised by CrowdStrike or a Kubernetes cluster is deemed insecure by Wiz, a workload IAM solution can automatically deny access by preventing credential issuance, ensuring that only trusted entities are granted access to sensitive systems. It can also support GeoIP-based controls and time-of-day restrictions, further enhancing security by allowing organizations to restrict access based on the location of workloads or ensuring they access services only within expected timeframes.

Automation plays a crucial role in managing access for dynamic workloads. As workloads are spun up and down continuously in cloud-native environments, automated policies ensure access conditions are checked without manual intervention. This allows organizations to enforce real-time access decisions for workloads based on their current state, reducing administrative burden and ensuring that only authorized workloads can access critical resources as needed.

Workload IAM is the Future of Securing Non-Human Identities

The 2024 Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management clearly shows that securing non-human identities is now a top priority for modern organizations. While traditional PAM solutions are evolving, they are not designed to address the unique challenges of securing dynamic, ephemeral workloads in cloud-native environments.

At Aembit, we believe workload IAM is the future of non-human identity security, moving your organization beyond traditional secrets management, delivering dynamic, real-time access controls that secure non-human identities across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. 

To request a demo or give it a try free, visit our website.

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