How To Protect Non-Human Identities (NHIs)

Non-human identities have become one of the most overlooked yet exploited attack surfaces in the modern enterprise. NHIs are entities that interact with systems and services but are not tied to a physical user. As organizations expand across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, thousands of machine-based identities are silently running critical operations, yet most are unmanaged, invisible and vulnerable to abuse.

You can protect NHIs by applying modern secrets management practices, enforcing least privilege, rotating credentials and monitoring access to sensitive systems.

The risks of unmanaged NHIs

The average enterprise manages thousands of NHIs. Many operate with persistent access, elevated privileges and little oversight. Without proper governance, NHIs become a low-effort, high-reward target for cybercriminals.

Most vulnerabilities stem from a few recurring patterns:

• Hard-coded secrets embedded in code repositories or config files
• Shared service accounts lacking ownership or traceability
• Static credentials that are never rotated or expired
• Overly permissive access granted by default and never revoked

Challenges in securing NHIs

NHIs are fundamentally different from human users, yet most organizations still rely on human-centric Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools to try to secure them. The result is a growing visibility gap and inconsistent controls that leave machine credentials exposed.

Traditional IAM systems weren’t built for workloads, containers, service accounts or ephemeral cloud infrastructure. While they excel at managing employee access, they often overlook the way NHIs behave and the risks they introduce.

Here are some challenges faced when securing NHIs:

• Limited visibility: NHIs often fly under the radar. They aren’t onboarded, offboarded or tracked like user accounts, which makes it difficult to know how many exist, where they live or what they access.
• No clear ownership: Responsibility for machine identities is often split among DevOps, IT, security and engineering, leading to unclear accountability and inconsistent policies.
• Credential fragmentation: Secrets are managed differently across environments. One team might use plaintext config files, another might store credentials in CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native services may rely on built-in identity mechanisms with minimal oversight.
• Excessive and persistent access: NHIs are commonly granted broad permissions and allowed to run indefinitely, often with the same credentials they were created with, violating the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) and zero standing privilege.
• Policy gaps: IAM policies designed for people don’t translate cleanly to machine identities. Applying access controls, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or audit logging to a headless container or script requires purpose-built tooling and automation.

These gaps make it easy for cybercriminals to exploit NHIs and hard for IT to detect or respond when they do.

5 ways to protect non-human identities

Here are five ways to reduce risk and take control of machine-based access across your environment.

1. Use a centralized secrets management system

Secrets should never be stored in plaintext, hardcoded in source code or manually passed between systems. A centralized secrets management platform ensures credentials are encrypted, access-controlled and managed throughout their lifecycle.

With Keeper Secrets Manager®, credentials can be securely stored, retrieved and rotated via API, helping organizations reduce secrets sprawl, automate workflows and enforce consistent policies across cloud and on-prem environments.

2. Rotate credentials automatically

Standing credentials create a long-lived attack surface. Automated rotation reduces that risk by regularly updating passwords, API tokens, SSH keys and other secrets, ensuring they remain short-lived and secure. With a platform like KeeperPAM® – which includes Keeper Secrets Manager – credentials can be rotated automatically on a set schedule, after each use or when systems are updated or redeployed.

This is an important step toward eliminating credential reuse and enforcing a zero-standing-privilege model across your environment.

3. Apply least privilege to NHIs

Every machine identity should have only the access it needs to do its job, nothing more. Start by defining least-privilege policies for each application or workload based on its specific role. Remove any default or inherited permissions that aren’t necessary, and use Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC) to enforce consistent, granular access across environments.

4. Enforce time-limited, audited access

NHIs often run continuously, but that doesn’t mean they need always-on access. Just-in-Time (JIT) access provisions credentials only when needed, then revokes them immediately after use, reducing the risk of misuse.

KeeperPAM makes this possible by delivering time-bound access tied to specific tasks or sessions. All activity is logged in real time and can be paired with session recording for full visibility and auditability.

5. Continuously discover and manage NHIs

To manage NHIs effectively, organizations need to continuously discover service accounts, cloud identities and workload credentials, then assess and govern them. This includes identifying orphaned or stale credentials, auditing privilege and usage patterns and using automation to flag or remove identities that are no longer in use.

Preventing NHI sprawl isn’t a one-time effort; it requires ongoing monitoring and lifecycle management across every environment.

Don’t let NHIs become a blind spot

As NHIs continue to grow in volume and complexity, they present a significant threat if left unmanaged. Organizations that fail to secure these identities expose themselves to credential theft, data breaches and lateral movement.

KeeperPAM helps organizations gain complete visibility and control over all privileged access, human and non-human. Built for hybrid infrastructure, KeeperPAM combines secrets management, password rotation, session recording and JIT access in one cloud-native platform.