Non-human identity (NHI) is an umbrella term for the digital identities of all non-human entities (service accounts, applications, workloads, containers, devices, bots, and AI agents) that need to authenticate and access resources. Closely related to machine identity, NHI has become a distinct focus area because these identities now dramatically outnumber human ones and represent a large, often under-secured attack surface.

The term captures a simple but consequential reality: most "users" accessing systems today aren’t people. Securing identity means securing this vast non-human population, not just human accounts.

What counts as a non-human identity

NHIs include service accounts (used by applications and automated processes), API keys and tokens, workloads and microservices, containers and serverless functions, IoT and other devices, bots, and increasingly AI agents. Anything that authenticates and acts without a human directly driving it in the moment has a non-human identity. In cloud-native environments especially, these can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Why NHIs are a security priority

Several factors make NHIs a growing risk. Scale: they far outnumber human identities, so the attack surface is large. Weak governance: unlike human accounts with HR-driven lifecycles and mandated MFA, NHIs are often created ad hoc, over-permissioned, and rarely reviewed. Credential exposure: their secrets (keys, tokens) get hard-coded, committed to code repositories, or left long-lived, and leaked NHI credentials are a common breach vector. Low visibility: many organizations don’t have a full inventory of their NHIs or what each can access. A compromised, over-privileged non-human identity can give an attacker deep, quiet access.

Securing non-human identities

Good NHI security applies identity best practices to machines: maintain visibility (inventory all NHIs and their access), enforce least privilege (scope each NHI to exactly what it needs), use short-lived credentials with automated rotation (limiting the value of a leaked secret), manage the full lifecycle (provision and decommission cleanly, no orphans), and secure secrets properly (no hard-coded keys). The principles mirror human identity governance, adapted to the scale and automation of machines.

NHI and the agentic era

AI agents are intensifying focus on NHI. Agents are a new, rapidly-growing kind of non-human identity that acts autonomously and often has access to sensitive accounts and actions: making their identity, authentication, and tightly-scoped authorization critical. As agents proliferate, NHI moves from an infrastructure-security niche to a central identity concern. Extending identity, authentication, and fine-grained, just-in-time authorization to non-human identities (including agents) is increasingly essential, and it’s a natural extension of the identity discipline into a world where most actors aren’t human.

Frequently asked questions

What is non-human identity (NHI)?

An umbrella term for the identities of non-human entities (service accounts, workloads, devices, bots, and AI agents) that authenticate and access resources.

How is NHI different from machine identity?

They overlap heavily; NHI is a broad umbrella that explicitly includes service accounts, bots, and AI agents alongside machines and workloads.

Why are non-human identities a security risk?

They outnumber humans, are often over-permissioned and poorly governed, and their credentials are frequently leaked or long-lived.

How do you secure NHIs?

Inventory them, enforce least privilege, use short-lived and rotated credentials, manage their full lifecycle, and secure their secrets.

Why are NHIs growing so fast?

Cloud-native architectures, microservices, automation, and now AI agents create huge and rapidly-expanding populations of non-human identities.

Related: Machine Identity · AI Agents / Agentic AI · Principle of Least Privilege · Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA) · IAM