A non-human identity (NHI) is any digital credential or authentication entity that operates without direct human control, including service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, machine certificates, and the credentials used by automated systems, bots, and AI agents to authenticate to other services. Managing and securing NHIs has become a critical and often overlooked dimension of identity security as the ratio of machine-to-human identities in modern software environments has grown dramatically.
A non-human identity (NHI) is any authentication credential or identity entity that belongs to a machine, application, or automated process rather than a person. This includes API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens, machine certificates, SSH keys, database credentials, and the credentials used by CI/CD pipelines, cloud functions, containers, and AI agents to call other services.
As NIST's Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 notes, non-person entities must be governed as "first-class identities," subject to the same verification, policy enforcement, and visibility controls applied to human users. In practice, most organizations have done the opposite. Human identity governance has matured considerably over the past decade; NHI governance is still catching up.
The scale of the gap is notable. According to research published by the NHI Management Group, NHIs now outnumber human identities in the average enterprise at a ratio of 144 to 1, a significant jump from 92 to 1 in 2024. The number of NHIs in the average enterprise grew by 44% between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025. For a startup with 50 engineers, that implies thousands of machine credentials scattered across AWS roles, GitHub Actions secrets, third-party SaaS integrations, and internal microservices.
Understanding the NHI landscape starts with knowing what forms these identities take.
API keys are static string credentials that grant access to an external service. They're the most common NHI type and the most commonly mishandled. API keys end up hardcoded in source code, checked into repositories, logged in CI/CD output, and shared via Slack. Once exposed, they provide access until manually rotated.
OAuth tokens are similar but typically short-lived and scoped to specific permissions. They're commonly used for application-to-application integrations and service-to-service calls. OAuth access tokens that are improperly stored or that grant excessive permissions represent a meaningful risk surface.
A service account is an account created to represent a process or application rather than a person. In cloud environments, service accounts are used by virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions to authenticate to other services. In SaaS platforms, they enable programmatic access via the product's API. Service accounts frequently accumulate permissions over time and rarely get deprovisioned when they're no longer needed.
Machine certificates, including TLS client certificates and SSH keys, authenticate servers, containers, and network devices to each other. Certificate management at scale requires automated rotation and monitoring for expiry, since an expired certificate can take down a service and an untracked certificate represents an access control gap.
Build and deployment pipelines require credentials to access source code repositories, push container images, and deploy to cloud environments. These credentials often carry elevated privileges and are stored as pipeline environment variables, which can be exposed through logging or pipeline poisoning attacks.
Agentic AI systems are rapidly expanding the NHI surface area. When you deploy an AI coding assistant, an automated security scanner, or a workflow automation tool, each creates new NHI credentials with access to your code, cloud environment, and internal systems. Unlike traditional service accounts, AI agents may request dynamic permissions at runtime, making static access reviews insufficient. The NHI governance question for 2025 and beyond is not just "what machine credentials do we have?" but "what can each of our AI agents access and do on our behalf?"
Fencer's identity and access security features include automated user access reviews that cover service accounts and non-human credentials alongside human users, giving teams a consolidated view of who and what has access to which systems. Fencer's continuous scanning surfaces exposed secrets and credentials across code repositories and CI/CD configurations before they can be exploited, and its cloud security posture management checks flag over-permissioned service accounts and IAM roles against least-privilege baselines. For teams preparing for SOC 2 or ISO 27001, Fencer auto-generates the access review evidence that auditors require.
A human user account is tied to an individual person, managed through identity providers like Okta or Azure AD, and subject to lifecycle processes like provisioning, password resets, and offboarding. A non-human identity represents a machine, application, or automated process and authenticates using credentials like API keys, tokens, or certificates rather than passwords. NHIs don't have human managers checking in on them, which means they rarely get reviewed, rotated, or deprovisioned without deliberate effort. The governance processes that work for human accounts don't automatically extend to NHIs; they require separate tooling and workflows.
Start with your cloud IAM configuration, which will show all service accounts and roles and what permissions they carry. Check your CI/CD platform for stored secrets and environment variables. Review your code repositories for hardcoded API keys using secrets scanning. Audit your SaaS integrations to see which third-party applications have OAuth connections to your internal tools. Many organizations discover NHIs in places they didn't expect, including forgotten integrations from tools that were evaluated but never fully adopted, and pipeline credentials from projects that were shut down. For most startups, this first inventory is the hardest step because it requires pulling data from several disconnected sources.
Yes, rotation is one of the most effective controls for limiting NHI risk. Long-lived credentials that are never rotated represent a persistent window of opportunity for attackers who obtain them. Many compliance frameworks, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001, require documented credential rotation policies. In practice, automated rotation is far more reliable than manual processes, since manual rotation tends to be skipped or delayed. Cloud provider native secrets management services and dedicated secrets management platforms support automated rotation with minimal disruption to the services that depend on those credentials.
