Top 7 NHI Risks and How To Mitigate Them

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are identities used by machines, applications and automated processes. They rely on credentials — such as API keys, tokens, or certificates — to authenticate and access systems, services and data. The exponential growth of NHIs in modern IT infrastructure makes securing them an operational necessity. NHIs are gradually outnumbering human users in most enterprise environments, and without proper oversight, they can introduce many security vulnerabilities. Common NHI risks include overprivileged access, improper offboarding, secret leakage and insecure authentication methods.

Continue reading to learn the top seven NHI security risks organizations face and how to mitigate each one.

1. Overprivileged NHIs

Granting NHIs more access than necessary significantly widens an organization’s attack surface. When an NHI has excessive privileges, a cybercriminal who compromises its credentials can move laterally across systems, escalate privileges and access critical systems. Minimizing unnecessary access is crucial for maintaining tight access controls and reducing the potential impact of a data breach.

How to mitigate this risk

• Enforce the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP): Limit every NHI’s access to only the permissions required to perform a specific task. Incorporating least-privilege access dramatically reduces lateral movement if an NHI is compromised.
• Implement policy-based controls: Use automation to monitor and review NHI access based on role. Solutions like KeeperPAM^® enable Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC) and Just-in-Time (JIT) access to provision NHIs.

2. Improper offboarding

One of the most overlooked aspects of managing NHIs is failing to decommission them once a project is complete or an employee who manages them is offboarded. In many enterprises, service accounts and API keys remain active for much longer than their originally intended temporary duration. These shadow identities typically retain high levels of access and, when forgotten, create a hidden attack vector for cybercriminals.

How to mitigate this risk

• Automate NHI lifecycle management: Implement automated processes to handle NHIs from their creation and usage through decommissioning. This ensures NHIs are properly deactivated when no longer needed, reducing the risk of orphaned accounts.
• Integrate with CI/CD pipelines: Configure CI/CD workflows so that credentials automatically expire following the completion of a project to minimize security gaps.
• Conduct frequent audits: Schedule regular reviews of all NHIs across systems and cloud environments. By identifying and removing unused accounts sooner rather than later, cybercriminals will be unable to exploit forgotten NHI credentials.

3. Secret leakage

Secret leakage occurs when credentials and tokens associated with NHIs are exposed through hardcoded values in scripts, configuration files or public repositories. These exposed NHIs can compromise valuable secrets and lead to secrets sprawl, where sensitive credentials are spread across multiple systems. Once a cybercriminal gains access to a leaked secret, they can impersonate an NHI to infiltrate critical systems, access sensitive data or escalate privileges.

How to mitigate this risk

• Use a secrets manager: Store, manage and securely share NHI credentials through an encrypted secrets management solution like Keeper Secrets Manager^®. Instead of embedding secrets in code or configuration files, solutions like Keeper reduce security risks by enabling granular access controls.
• Prohibit hardcoded credentials: Enforce policies that forbid hardcoding passwords, tokens, keys and secrets into source code or scripts. Integrate code scanning tools into CI/CD pipelines to detect and remediate hardcoded secrets before deployment.
• Implement automatic credential rotation: Automatically rotate credentials to minimize the lifespan of any secret, limiting the impact of compromised or leaked credentials.

4. Insecure authentication methods

Many organizations rely on outdated or weak authentication methods for their NHIs, leaving critical systems and sensitive data in jeopardy. Some examples of insecure authentication methods include OAuth 1.0 and static API keys. When NHIs authenticate using insecure methods, the risk of credential theft and privilege escalation increases, especially in distributed work environments.

How to mitigate this risk

• Use token-based authentication: Replace long-lived credentials with short-lived tokens that automatically expire after a set period of time to reduce the risk of credential reuse.
• Implement JIT access: Provide NHIs with time-bound, temporary access only when needed, and revoke access immediately following the specific task. JIT access reduces the attack surface and prevents standing access even if a token is compromised.
• Replace static credentials with SAML: Integrate NHIs into a federated identity framework like KeeperPAM, which supports SAML-based authentication. Without relying on static credentials, KeeperPAM ensures each access request is authenticated and logged through a trusted Identity Provider (IdP).

5. Third-party NHIs

Integrating third-party vendors’ NHIs into your organization’s systems significantly increases the chances of supply chain attacks. Although these integrations usually improve efficiency, poorly secured or inadequately monitored third-party NHIs can become prime targets for cybercriminals. Without visibility into how those NHIs are used, organizations can potentially suffer significant operational disruptions.

How to mitigate this risk

• Perform security assessments: Evaluate all third-party NHIs before granting access. Assess how vendors’ NHIs authenticate, what data they access and whether they follow secure credential management practices.
• Continuously monitor third-party access: Use DevOps tools to track the behavior of third-party NHIs in real time. Monitor vendors’ access logs for behavioral anomalies and suspicious activity that may indicate privilege misuse or compromise.

6. Insecure cloud deployment configurations

When cloud environments are misconfigured, NHIs and their secrets can become exposed. Common misconfigurations, like broad access policies or improper access to critical resources, can be exploited by cybercriminals, allowing them to move laterally or steal data.

How to mitigate this risk

• Conduct regular cloud audits: Continuously review security policies and permissions across all cloud environments. Ensure NHIs are granted only the minimum necessary privileges, and remove any unused access rights that could expose sensitive information.
• Use tools to detect misconfigurations: Deploy identity threat detection tools that automatically identify and notify users about risky configurations, helping maintain compliance.

7. Long-lived secrets

Long-lived secrets without expiration dates or rotation introduce serious security risks to enterprise environments. Since these secrets can be used indefinitely, they are very useful to cybercriminals if compromised. After a long-lived secret is leaked or stolen, cybercriminals can maintain continuous access to systems or data while remaining undetected.

How to mitigate this risk

• Enforce automatic time-based expiration: Configure all NHI secrets, tokens and API keys to expire automatically after a set period. Ephemeral credentials limit the opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit them and gain unauthorized access.
• Rotate secrets on a schedule: Implement automated secret rotation policies that update credentials regularly or after each use. This ensures that even if a secret is exposed, it quickly becomes unusable.
• Enforce ephemeral access using a secrets manager: Use a dedicated secrets manager like Keeper Secrets Manager to issue temporary, on-demand secrets. Integrate this directly into your CI/CD pipelines so that secrets are constantly provisioned and deprovisioned as part of the deployment lifecycle.

Control your NHI security with Keeper

NHIs have become a key part of enterprise security operations as many organizations scale to accommodate advances in machine-to-machine communication. Each unmanaged or overprivileged NHI increases an organization’s attack surface and the potential for data breaches. 

To stay ahead of modern cyber threats, organizations must achieve full visibility by centralizing and automating control over every NHI within their systems. KeeperPAM provides a unified Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution that protects both human and non-human identities, allowing organizations to automate credential rotation, enforce least-privilege access and integrate secure authentication methods.

Request a demo of KeeperPAM today to gain full control over your organization’s NHI security.