The Top 10 Non-Human Identity (NHI) Management Solutions
We reviewed 10 NHI management platforms on how completely they discover NHIs across cloud and SaaS, how well they flag which identities pose a real risk, and whether they remediate by rotating and revoking credentials, rather than just raising alerts.
Written by
Mirren McDade
When we talk about Non-Human Identities (NHIs), we’re talking about the machine identities that work autonomously to support regular operations. These identities include service accounts, workload identities, and, increasingly, AI agents. These typically authenticate using credentials such as API keys, OAuth tokens, certificates, and other secrets.
The issue with NHIs (the identities behind cloud workloads, scripts, integrations, CI/CD pipelines, and especially AI agents) is that, unlike employees, who have managers to answer to and onboarding/offboarding processes to follow, they often have no owner keeping them in check.
Often created by developers or spun up by SaaS integrations without an IT teams’ input, these NHIs can fly under the radar and be left to spawl uncontrollably. There is often no decommissioning or offboarding process, resulting in them having a long dwell time after the project has been completed. Sometimes, the employee who set them up has left, accumulating excess privileges over time.
Because they also sit outside MFA, conditional access, and access review controls, NHIs make an attractive target for attackers. An account that is unmanaged and forgotten about, with some level of privileges into an organization is too good to ignore.
In this article, we’ve evaluated ten of the most popular NHI management solutions on the market, comparing key features and capabilities, to help you decide the best fit for your team.
What is Identity And Access Management?
NHIs are digital identities, that serve a function within software. They authenticate using credentials like API keys, OAuth grants, certificates, and other secrets. NHI management is the practice of discovering these machine identities and keeping them under control: knowing what they are, who owns them, and what they can access.
Core functions of NHI management solutions include continuous discovery and inventory across cloud, SaaS, code, CI/CD, and on-prem. They also cover ownership attribution, privilege and posture analysis (including over-privileged, orphaned, stale and misconfigured accounts), lifecycle management (including provisioning, rotating, attesting, and decommissioning identities), threat detection and response for identity behavior, and secrets security (including vaulting, scanning, rotation, or secretless/JIT patterns).
JumpCloud
JumpCloud
Best for SMEs and mid-market IT teams looking to consolidate point tools.
JumpCloud is an open directory platform built for humans, machines, and agents. It offers a complete identity stack including directory services, SSO, MFA, password management, and cross-OS device management together in a single cloud console. The NHI management platform acts as a single plane to govern all identities. Every agent is assigned a corporate identity that is discovered, onboarded, and registered like any human identity, with its lifecycle, entitlements, and conditional access policies.
- Complete non-human identity lifecycle management from onboarding to offboarding
- All non-human identities, including AI agents are automatically discovered and placed into a unified directory
- AI gateway provides a central console for managing all non-human identities and workflows
- AI Device Trust verifies the state and health of hardware so machine identities cannot be compromised
- Human-in-the-loop governance allows admins to set up risk-based oversight before NHIs can access important services
- Conditional access policies based upon context-aware access decisions are applied to both human and non-human identities
- Full IAM/MDM platform including SSO, MFA, Password management, and patching, built on Zero Trust principles
JumpCloud offers a complete agentic IAM implementation for SMEs and mid-market organizations. Admins are able to manage all identities, non-human, human and agentic from a single admin console. This makes building and applying access policies straightforward. JumpCloud integrates across identity providers and AI tools, helping you to identitfy and prevent gaps in your NHI posture. We’d recommend that mid-sized SMBs up to enterprise sized teams consider JumpCloud as an effective all-in-one agentic IAM platform.
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Aembit
Aembit
Aembit is a workload IAM platform that securely provisions NHIs access to any services, applications or APIs they need. The platform delivers a secure and simple way to enable policy-based access to AI agents, based on zero trust principles. Aembit also provides conditional access policies for NHIs using third party integrations, including enabling MFA-like capabilities even where the original service doesn’t support them. Aembit describes itself as Okta for workloads, machines, and non-human identities.
- Enforces identity-based conditional access to AI agents
- Applications get just-in-time access with short-lived tokens or credentials
- Automates credential rotation
- MCP authorization policies deliver purpose-built controls that govern which tools/APIs an agent can access
- Policy-based, per-task authorization with conditional access on workload posture
- No-code auth injection at the proxy layer
- Coverage across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem targets
This is one of the strongest picks for workload identity management. It delivers Agent-to-API and Agent-to-tool access, without using standing credentials. The solution is ideal for reducing the time spent on authorizing AI Agents, whilst eliminating hard-coded and stored secrets in apps.
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Akeyless
Akeyless
Akeyless is a cloud-native SaaS platform that secures machines, AI agents, and human identities from a single console. It started as a secrets manager, but now delivers “Runtime Identity Security at Agentic Scale,” securing over 220 billion machine interactions. It centralizes secrets such as API keys, passwords, and certificates, plus encryption and key management. Akeyless’ defining design choice is its vaultless architecture, with no vault infrastructure to deploy or maintain and instead, patented Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC). This splits encryption keys into fragments stored in different locations, so no party – including Akeyless – can access them.
- Stores and delivers static, dynamic, and short-lived secrets with no vault overhead, and automates credential rotation
- Multi-Vault Governance connects existing vaults, such as HashiCorp and cloud secret managers, to a single control plane without replacing current tooling
- Universal Identity solves the “secret zero” problem by letting workloads authenticate without an initial stored credential
- For AI agents, Akeyless discovers and maps them across the environment (Agentic Identity Intelligence), keeps secrets out of them entirely so they never hold a credential (SecretlessAI), and validates, scopes, and enforces every agent action in session (Agentic Runtime Authority)
- Certificate lifecycle management automates issuance and renewal
- Modern PAM delivers just-in-time access with no standing privileges, plus a multi-cloud KMS with quantum-resilient keys
- Integrations span Kubernetes (OpenShift, Rancher), Terraform, CI/CD tools, and SIEM log forwarding to Splunk and Sumo Logic
Akeyless is one of the strongest picks for teams that want to establish secrets management as the foundations of their NHI security. The vaultless architecture is a standout feature that cuts the cost compared to running a traditional vault, whilst still keeping secrets private through zero-knowledge encryption, all from a single platform spanning secrets, certificates, PAM, and AI agents. We’d recommend it to organizations whose main security vulnerability is their credentials, particularly those looking to replace existing vault infrastructure.
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Astrix Security
Astrix Security
Astrix Security is a NHI security pure-play solution that provides security teams with greater visibility and control over NHIs and AI agents. This solution is designed to solve the issue of agent and NHI sprawl, where ungoverned identities sit outsit of IAM and audit review cycles. This is achieved by applying governance measures, least-privileged access, and full audit trails. Astrix Security have supported Fortune 1000 enterprises in extending their traditional IAN to cover NHIs, and as of June 2026 have been acquired by CISCO (although is still operates under the Astrix name).
- Discover builds a single inventory of AI agents, MCP servers, and NHIs with business context, through automated discovery of all agents (custom, third-party, or home-grown), which includes any shadow and unregistered ones
- Secures identifies and remediates agents and NHIs with excessive privileges, vulnerable configurations, abnormal activity, and policy violations
- Deploy provisions secure-by-design AI agents with short-lived credentials, just-in-time and precisely scoped access, and policy applied at creation (powered by the Agent Control Plane)
- Agentic threat detection and response catches compromised credentials and out-of-scope agent actions
- NHI lifecycle management that runs from provisioning through to decommissioning
- Centralized secret management across vaults and cloud
- Third-party risk management assesses of external apps and vendors accessing your environment
- Supported environments include AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, GitHub, Snowflake, Databricks, and Kubernetes
Astrix is the most established of the pure-plays featured on this list, which shows in its category-defining depth on SaaS-to-SaaS integrations, OAuth grants, and API key sprawl. Its long term viability is supported by its strong enterprise customer list and its recent move to Cisco, and we would recommend it to organizations whose biggest risk is ungoverned SaaS and OAuth-based identities (on-prem-heavy teams should confirm coverage first).
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Clutch Security
Clutch Security
2023
Clutch Security is an enterprise cybersecurity platform that protects the non-human attack surface by securing and managing NHIs, such as service accounts, OAuth apps, and AI agents, along with the secrets and keys they use to authenticate. It does this through providing complete visibility, governance, and Zero Trust enforcement. Clutch Security promises to cover every identity, agent, and secret by connecting each entity to its origin, the people behind it, where it’s stored, and the resources it reaches. This results in each one identity having contextual information, than appearing as an isolated finding.
- Discovery and inventory maps every NHI to the people and systems behind it
- Lifecycle management tracks ownership, expiration, and access reviews for all identities
- Posture and risk management prioritizes risks by access scope and blast radius
- Threat detection identifies anomalous identity behavior
- For AI agents: discovers every agent (sanctioned or not) and maps its access, set Agent Guardrails around permissions, tools, and credentials, then detect credential theft, manipulation, and exfiltration
- For secrets: secret governance, contextual scanning that reveals a leaked secret’s full blast radius, and Vault Augmentation to show what’s missing from your vault and what was copied out
- Progressive Zero Trust: establishes behavioral baselines automatically, applies ACL enforcement, then transitions to ephemeral credentials
- Automated workflows handle remediation, rotation, certification, and policy enforcement, from detection to resolution without waiting on engineering
Clutch stood out to us for how it tackles the root causes of NHI risk, instead of just cataloguing it. This solution uses its Identity Lineage graph to give every identity, agent, and secret full context and a clear blast radius, while agentless, one-click deployment gives you a full inventory fast. We recommend Clutch to organizations whose goal it is to reach zero standing privileges and ephemeral credentials, as long as they are ready for the operational changes that shift entails.
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CyberArk
CyberArk
CyberArk is an identity and access management platform that specializes in privileged access management and offers comprehensive machine identity security solutions. It supports the management and protection of machine identities such as workload identities, along with the secrets, certificates, and SSH keys they authenticate with. February of 2026 saw the completion of Palo Alto Networks’ acquisition of CyberArk, so its identity security capabilities are now offered as part of Palo Alto Networks’ Idira identity platform.
- Secrets management protects secrets and machine identities across applications, DevOps pipelines, and cloud workloads, through Secrets Manager (SaaS and self-hosted), Secrets Hub, and Credential Providers
- Certificate management, built on the Venafi acquisition, delivers complete certificate visibility and lifecycle automation to prevent outages
- Workload Identity Security protects Kubernetes environments with just-in-time issuance and authentication for every workload identity
- Secure AI Agents extends privilege controls to AI agents
- Comprehensive observability across a single, consolidated platform for all machine identities
- Policy-driven automation for every machine identity type, covering discovery, privilege control, and governance
- Built for what’s coming, including reduced certificate lifetimes, quantum computing, and agentic AI
CyberArk offers the broadest machine identity portfolio of the featured solutions. They cover secrets, certificates, PKI, SSH, code signing, workload identities, and agents, all under one vendor and with a Venafi-based certificate stack that is widely considered a market leader. It is also proven at genuine enterprise scale, so we would recommend CyberArk to large enterprises looking to consolidate machine identity security with a single vendor.
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Entro Security
Entro Security
Entro Security is a cybersecurity platform that focuses on unifying security for AI agents, NHIs, and secrets by delivering complete visibility, ownership attribution, and the real-time detection of anomalies. Entro Security promises to govern all AI agents, securing each action across the environment, through a single platform that monitors agents and understands their intent. It also promises to do this without disrupting developers or requiring them to adopt new ways of working. In June of 2026 SailPoint completed its acquisition of Entro, though the Entro name is still in use.
- Discovery and inventory locate and log every NHI, secret, and agentic AI deployment across clouds, code, CI/CD, on-prem, and collaboration tools, then classifies each by permissions, purpose, and criticality
- NHIDR, the proprietary detection engine, continuously monitors AI agents and NHIs for behavioral anomalies to flag real-time threats across the stack
- Ownership attribution maps every NHI and secret back to its human owner for faster remediation
- Secrets scanning runs deep, contextual scans across code, cloud, CI/CD, and SaaS, mapping each exposed secret to its source, owner, and real risk
- Idle Secrets capability flags unused or orphaned secrets before they become risks
- Lineage mapping visualizes how AI agents connect to cloud, code, and SaaS tools
- Posture management continuously assesses privileges and usage to surface overprivileged, idle, misconfigured, or orphaned tokens
- Enforces least-privilege access across clouds, agents, and vaults (Zero Trust, PAM, and JIT), and manages identities from creation to rotation and retirement
Entro unifies secrets, NHI, and AI agent security in a singular platform, while its NHIDR engine delivers genuine detection and response as opposed to static posture snapshots. Ownership attribution sits at its core and ensures all identities and secrets tie back to a responsible owner, which speeds up remediation. We would recommend Entro to teams looking for unified secrets and NHI management.
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GitGuardian
GitGuardian
GitGuardian is a well-recognized secrets detection company with a focus on secrets security and NHI governance. A core promise of the platform is secure all secrets, close every incident, and protect all NHIs, which it does by managing secrets throughout the entire lifecycle. GitGuardian tops the GitHub Marketplace, scans over 2 billion commits each year, and it utilized by more than 600,000 developers.
- ggshield CLI scans for over 550 types of secrets across pre-commit and pre-push hooks, IDEs, AI coding tools, agent skills, plugins, and MCP servers
- Internal secrets monitoring covers code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, container registries, Jira, Slack, and public GitHub
- Agentic prioritization triages and auto-routes each incident the way a SecOps engineer would
- NHI governance inventories service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, and AI agents, flagging orphaned, over-privileged, and rotation-overdue credentials
- Ownership attribution assigns each non-human identity to a responsible owner
- Developer endpoint protection monitors every credential on every developer machine
- Context-enriched remediation moves from leak to notification in under 60 seconds, with permissions, scope, validity, and ownership attached
- Complements existing secrets managers rather than replacing them, catching the credentials that end up outside the vault
GitGuardian would be the strongest pick for organizations whose NHI issues start with secrets sprawl and CI/CD. Their best-in-class detection works to catch leaks right where they happen, and every finding arrives alongside the relevant context for remediation. GitGuardian offers a genuinely free tier and publishes per-developer pricing, so it’s easy to trial. We suggest this tool to developer-heavy teams, although would suggest that those requiring deep SaaS OAuth or AI agent runtime governance pair it with an NHI pure-play.
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Oasis Security
Oasis Security
Oasis Security is a purpose-built non-human identity management platform which centers on access controls that understand intent, not just static roles and permissions, an approach they describe as Agentic Access Management. This platform promises to secure AI agents and NHIs across IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and on-prem environments, from Azure, AWS, and BigQuery to GitHub, ChatGPT, Salesforce, Office 365, and Copilot. Oasis cites the fact that traditional IAM is falling behind AI agents, and consistent governance controls are needed to manage them at scale.
- Real-time inventory of every NHI, each tied to a clear owner or system, with context on what the identity does and why
- Posture management checks identity configurations and overall security health across the environment
- AI-SPM applies those same posture checks specifically to AI agents, covering configurations, permissions, and risk
- Agentic Intent and Access Control, the newest layer, reads an agent’s intent and enforces time-bound access
- Lifecycle management runs from creation to removal, with automated provisioning that grants each AI agent only the access it needs, only for as long as it needs it
- Threat and anomaly detection flags risky or unusual identity behaviour, with remediation to resolve issues
- Safe Secret Rotation rotates credentials without breaking the services that depend on them
- Broad environment coverage across identity providers (Azure, AWS, GCP, Okta, Ping, Active Directory), vaults (HashiCorp, Azure Key Vault, AWS KMS), SaaS and data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, GitHub, Salesforce), and AI services (OpenAI, Bedrock, Copilot)
Oasis stood out to us for the completeness of its lifecycle coverage, which includes automated provisioning that stands up NHIs correctly from the beginning instead of only cleaning up the old ones. It takes an intent-based approach to agent access, is well-funded, and is a platform built for depth. We would recommend Oasis to enterprises looking for full, end-to-end NHI lifecycle management.
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Token Security
Token Security
Token Security is a cybersecurity solution that takes an identity-first approach to AI agent security. This AI-native NHI platform secures every non-human identity, from service accounts and API tokens to AI agents, through continuous discovery, control, and automated response. Its core argument is that remediation is where teams often get stuck, and without understanding what each identity and agent actually does, security and IAM teams tend to hold back from acting, out of fear of breaking production systems. Token was named a finalist in the 2026 RSAC Innovation Sandbox contest.
- Continuous discovery uncovers every AI agent and NHI across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud environments, with full context on each
- Lifecycle management enforces ownership and automatically decommissions orphaned identities
- Security posture management spots permissions drift, right-sizes access, and eliminates dangerous overexposure
- Identity threat detection and response catch behavioral anomalies and suspicious activity as it happens, triggering remediation workflows based on dynamic risk thresholds
- Deep Identity Intelligence correlates agents, humans, secrets, permissions, and data in a single identity graph, exposing the blast radius of any compromise and enabling remediation at scale
- Intent-based least privilege gives each agent only the permissions its purpose requires, and only for as long as it needs them
- Built-in AI tooling includes a conversational Token AI Agent inside the platform, a Token MCP Server for querying the NHI environment from Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Cursor
Token Security takes a firmly machine-first, AI-native approach to security. This solution is built to secure AI agents and is not simply adapted from human IAM. Its unified identity graph maps out the blast radius of a compromise, while the intent-based least privilege ties each agent’s access to its purpose and time window. Our recommendation would be that teams prioritizing AI agent security consider Token, while also bearing in mind that as a newer solution this tool has less of a track record than established players on our list.
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Other Services To Consider
We would recommend considering the following platforms too.
NHI protection within its identity security fabric, strong on-prem/AD coverage
Secrets management infrastructure standard
Cloud access governance for human + non-human
Cloud PAM / JIT privileges including NHIs
Service Summary
| Product | Starting Price | Link |
|---|---|---|
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JumpCloud
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Free tier (up to 10 users/10 devices). Paid from $9/user/month (Device Management) to $24/user/month (Platform Prime); ~18% discount billed annually. Agentic IAM pricing not yet published — contact sales
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Aembit
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Free plan: up to 10 workloads or 3 AI agents, 10 access policies or 5 MCP authorization policies, 24-hour log retention. Paid tiers custom.
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Akeyless
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Quote-based; free trial available.
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Astrix Security
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Custom quote only.
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Clutch Security
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Custom quote only.
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CyberArk
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Custom quote only. Machine identity and Secure AI Agents modules priced per identity volume.
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Entro Security
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Custom quote only (now sold via SailPoint).
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GitGuardian
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Free for small teams (up to 25 developers). Paid: $18/developer/month above 25 developers; NHI Governance priced per developer seat.
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Oasis Security
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Custom quote only — demo-led sales.
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Token Security
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Custom quote only.
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Identity And Access Management Checklist
When selecting a Non-Human Identity (NHI) management solution, we’d recommend looking for the following features:
An NHI tool is only as good as its reach. Making sure it can discover identities everywhere they live - across cloud, SaaS, code and CI/CD pipelines, and on-premises systems – is essential, as any environment left unscanned becomes a blind spot where ungoverned identities can quietly accumulate.
One of the biggest problems with NHIs is not knowing who owns them. A strong NHI solution should links every identity to a responsible person or system, so that when something needs reviewing, rotating, or shutting down, there is always someone accountable to act.
Look beyond tools that simply highlight the problem and instead seek out ones that actively manages each identity across its whole life by automating credential rotation, access attestation, and the decommissioning of identities that are no longer needed, before they can turn into a liability.
With AI agents multiplying fast, your solution needs purpose-built controls to manage them. Check that it can register agents, grant scoped entitlements, apply human-in-the-loop approval for high-risk actions, and keep a full audit trail of what each agent has done.
Visibility alone is not enough. The strongest tools continuously monitor how non-human identities actually behave and can act on anomalies the moment they appear, containing a threat as it unfolds rather than simply flagging what was misconfigured after the fact.
NHI tools fall into different camps, with some governing the credentials you already have and others replacing them altogether with just-in-time or secretless access. Decide which approach suits your environment and risk appetite before committing.
An NHI solution has to fit the tools you already run. Confirm it integrates with your existing IAM and IGA platforms, secrets vaults, and SIEM or SOAR systems, so it strengthens your security operations rather than adding another silo.
Lots of these NHI companies are being bought by bigger firms right now (Cisco bought Astrix, SailPoint bought Entro, and Palo Alto Networks bought CyberArk). When that happens, the product can change. Since an acquisition can alter how a product is packaged, priced, and developed, it is worth checking a vendor's current ownership and roadmap before you commit.
Everything You Need To Know About Non-Human Identity Management (FAQs)
What Is A Non-Human Identity?
A non-human identity (NHI) is an identity that is digital, belonging to a machine rather than a human user. Human users like employees or contractors have long been an security concern; now they’re joined by machine actors that operate autonomously to keep systems running. Common examples of these NHIs include service accounts, workload identities, scripts, bots, SaaS integrations, and, increasingly, AI agents.
NHIs must authenticate themselves, like human users, before they can access a systems, which they do using credentials such as API keys, OAuth tokens, certificates, and other secrets. So essentially, the NHI is the identity that takes action, while the credential is the ‘key’ to making that action happen. A single non-human identity may hold several credentials at one time, like how a person might hold many keys to many doors.
The issue with NHIs is their sheer volume, as they now outnumber human identities in many organizations, and that number only increases as businesses jump to adopt more cloud services, automation, and AI agents. Like any security concern, NHIs need addressing, which is exactly what non-human identity management solutions were built to do.
How Do Non-Human Identity Management Solutions Work?
Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) solutions work by discovering, securing, and governing machine identities. These solutions give organizations visibility and control over machine identities in their environment, and while exact approach varies from vendors to vendor, most follow a similar set of steps:
- Discover and inventory: you can manage what you can see, so NHI management solution ensure you have oversight over all machine identities by continuously scanning cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments to identify them, including any made without IT teams’ knowledge, to create a single inventory for them.
- Ownership and context: All machine identities are tied to a responsible owner, so non are left unclaimed and uncertain, and are enriched with relevant context. This context includes details on what the identity is, what it does, what it can access, and whether it is still actively being used.
- Posture and least privilege: These solutions then assess the configuration of each identity, ensuring that any excessive or unused permissions are flagged for review. They also enforce right-size access to make sure that identities only even hold the privileges they need.
- Monitoring, detection, and response: These identities are not then simply left alone, they are watched continually for any risky an anomalous behavior. If they are acting unusually or something looks wrong, alerts and automated responses are issues.
- Lifecycle management: from creation to decommissioning, a good NHI management tool should manage an identity across the whole of its lifecycle, rotating or revoking credentials and cleaning up any orphaned or stale identities before they have the chance to become a liability.
These capabilities altogether work to take a sprawling population of current, outdated, or even unknown machine identities, and gather them together under one secure umbrella so that every one is known, understood, and securely managed.
What Key Capabilities Should You Look For In A Non-Human Identity Management Solution?
Most NHI management tools can be relied upon to discover, govern, and monitor machine identities, and will largely do so using the same methods and tools. What will set apart a strong solution from a just okay one will be depth of capability. When comparing options, look for:
- AI Agent governance depth: any tool you pick will be able to discover agents in your environments, but the tools you should prioritize are those that will also give you control over what the agent can do, narrow the access it has, and safely govern the tools and systems it connects with.
- Reduce, not just manage, standing credentials: long-lived credentials are a clear security risk, and the best NHI management tools will limit them through approaches like just-in-time or short-lived access to address the root cause of credential risk rather than simply tracking it.
- Action, not just alerts: to truly tackle suspicious behavior as it happens, look for a tool that offers continuous monitoring that can actually take action, not just report, when it spots misconfigurations.
- Ownership attribution: a good NHI management solution ties each identity it discovers back to the responsible owner, as this allows teams to remediate effectively and avoid leaving any risky identities untouched.
- Integration coverage: the tool you pick needs to match your stack, so be sure to choose an NHI management solution that covers the identity providers, vaults, clouds, code repositories, and SaaS tools you actually run.
- Practical fit: before making a decision, it’s important to consider the small things that affect the day-to-day adoption, like how quickly the tool deploys, whether it runs as SaaS or self-hosted, and how transparent the pricing is.
What Is A Non-Human Identity Attack?
A non-human identity attack is any attack that targets or exploits a machine identity instead of a human user, with the goal of gaining unauthorized access to systems and data. Because NHIs authenticate using credentials like API keys, OAuth tokens, and certificates, attackers will try to get hold of these credentials and, if they do, can effectively become that identity and inherit whatever level of access it possesses.
A non-human identity attack typically begins with an exposed or stolen credential, a secret hard-coded in a public code repository, a token left in a misconfigured system, or a service account that is over-privileged or not locked down sufficiently. Once they have managed to enter, attackers can use the identity’s permissions to move through connected systems, escalate access, and steal data, and they can often do this without tripping the alarms set up to spot suspicious human user behaviors.
Since these identities tend to sit outside of the protections built for humans, they open up a level of risk that needs to be managed. NHIs are often not covered by multi-factor authentication or given conditional access, and are also frequently left unreviewed or left with much higher levels of privilege than they need to function. For an attacker these non-human identities are a dream come true, and they are a stealthier, more reliable way in than phishing an employee.
What Are Non-Human Identity Management Vendors?
NHI management vendors are the security companies that build tools for discovering, governing, and securing machine identities. Some, like CyberArk and JumpCloud, fold NHI management into a broader identity and access platform, while others, like Astrix, Clutch, Oasis, and Token, are dedicated pure-plays built specifically to solve the problem. A third group, which includes Akeyless and GitGuardian, comes at it from the credential and secrets layer.
This is a young, fast-moving market, and vendors approach the problem from different starting points, so the right fit depends on where your biggest gaps are. It is also consolidating quickly, with several pure-plays recently acquired by larger security companies, including Astrix by Cisco, Entro by SailPoint, and CyberArk by Palo Alto Networks. Because that kind of activity can change how a product is packaged, priced, and developed, it is worth confirming a vendor’s current status and roadmap before you decide to commit.
Identity And Access Management Resources
Further reading on identity and access management from Expert Insights — buyers' guides, comparison articles, and platform-specific shortlists.
Written By
Mirren McDade is a senior writer and journalist at Expert Insights, spending each day researching, writing, editing and publishing content, covering a variety of topics and solutions, and interviewing industry experts.
She is an experienced copywriter with a background in a range of industries, including cloud business technologies, cloud security, information security and cyber security, and has conducted interviews with several industry experts.
Mirren holds a First Class Honors degree in English from Edinburgh Napier University.