Non-Human Identity

NHI

A Non-Human Identity (NHI) is a digital construct used for machine-to-machine access and authentication — representing applications, services, bots, scripts, CI/CD pipelines, cloud workloads, or AI agents that need to authenticate to systems and APIs without a human operating them.

⚙️ How Does It Work?

NHIs use machine credentials (API keys, service account passwords, certificates, OAuth tokens) to authenticate. Unlike human identities, NHIs typically cannot use MFA. They require specialized governance: automated rotation, least privilege scoping, lifecycle tracking, and behavioral monitoring.

📍 Where Is It Used?

Every modern IT environment — NHIs now outnumber human identities by 10:1 to 45:1 in cloud-native organizations. They are the fastest-growing and least-governed identity type.

💡 Real-World Example

A company has 2,000 employees but 80,000 non-human identities: 15,000 service accounts, 25,000 API keys, 30,000 OAuth tokens, and 10,000 certificates. A security audit reveals 60% have never-rotated credentials, 40% are orphaned, and 20% have admin-level permissions — making NHIs the #1 identity attack surface.

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