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Service Account

A service account is a non-human identity used by applications, scripts, and services to authenticate and interact with other systems — often with elevated privileges that persist indefinitely.

PAM IAM Non-Human Identity

❓ What is Service Account?

A service account is a non-human identity used by applications, scripts, and services to authenticate and interact with other systems — often with elevated privileges that persist indefinitely.

⚙️ How Does It Work?

Service accounts are secured through PAM: rotating credentials, limiting permissions to least privilege, monitoring usage, and replacing long-lived passwords with short-lived dynamic credentials or managed identities.

📍 Where Is It Used?

Every enterprise IT environment — databases, middleware, scheduled tasks, CI/CD pipelines, cloud workloads.

💡 Real-World Example

A company discovers 500 service accounts, many with domain admin privileges and passwords unchanged for 7 years. A PAM audit reveals 60% are for decommissioned applications. The cleanup dramatically reduces the attack surface.

🔗 Related Terms

PAM Non-Human Identity Secrets Management Least Privilege Privileged Account
← SemperisSegregation of Duties →

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