If you ask most organizations how many users they manage, they’ll confidently answer with an employee count.
If you ask how many identities they manage, the real answer is often:

“We don’t actually know.”

That’s because the fastest-growing identity population today isn’t human at all.

Welcome to the era of Non-Human Identities (NHIs)- service accounts, API tokens, OAuth apps, bots, workloads, and machine identities that now outnumber employees by 10x or more in most enterprises.

What Are Non-Human Identities?

Non-Human Identities are digital identities used by applications, scripts, services, and infrastructure not people.

They include:

• Service accounts
• API keys and tokens
• OAuth applications
• CI/CD pipeline identities
• Cloud workloads (Kubernetes, containers, serverless)
• Automation bots
• AI agents and integrations

Unlike human users, NHIs:

• Don’t log in interactively
• Rarely expire
• Often have broad privileges
• Are poorly documented
• Are almost never reviewed

And that’s exactly why attackers love them.

Why NHIs Are the Fastest-Growing Identity Risk

Modern attacks increasingly target machine identities, not users.

Why?

• No MFA
• Long-lived credentials
• Excessive permissions
• No ownership tracking
• No lifecycle management

A single leaked API token can grant persistent access for months completely bypassing traditional IAM controls.

Recent breaches across cloud and SaaS environments have shown a clear pattern:

The attacker didn’t steal a password. They abused a token.

Traditional IAM Was Never Built for This

Classic IAM systems were designed for:

• Employees
• Contractors
• Role-based access
• Login-centric workflows

Non-Human Identities don’t fit that model.

They don’t join or leave HR systems.
 They don’t request access.
 They don’t log in through SSO.
 They don’t get offboarded.

As a result:

• Service accounts accumulate unchecked
• OAuth apps gain excessive scopes
• API tokens live forever
• Ownership disappears over time

This creates a massive identity governance gap.

Why Non-Human Identity Governance Is Now Critical

Organizations that ignore NHIs face:

• Undetected lateral movement
• Persistent backdoor access
• Audit failures
• Cloud privilege escalation
• Supply chain risk through integrations

To manage NHIs properly, organizations must answer basic questions:

• What non-human identities exist?
• What apps and systems use them?
• What permissions do they have?
• Who owns them?
• When were they last used?
• Should they still exist?

If you can’t answer these, you don’t have identity control you have identity debt.

The Shift Toward Non-Human Identity Governance

The IAM industry is now evolving to include:

• Service account discovery
• Token lifecycle management
• Permission scoping and rotation
• Ownership attribution
• Usage monitoring
• Automated revocation

This is where governance becomes more important than authentication.

You don’t “log in” a service account you govern it.

Where IAM Meets Application Governance

Non-Human Identities are tightly coupled with applications.

Every SaaS app:

• Creates API tokens
• Registers OAuth clients
• Manages integrations
• Assigns admin scopes

Without application-level visibility, it’s impossible to govern NHIs effectively.

That’s why modern IAM strategies are expanding into Enterprise Application Governance (EAG) connecting:

• Identities (human + non-human)
• Applications
• Permissions
• Ownership
• Usage
• Risk

You cannot govern identities without governing applications.

The Future: Identity Is No Longer Human-Centric

The future of IAM will not be about users alone.
 It will be about relationships between identities, applications, and permissions many of them non-human.

Winning organizations will:

• Treat NHIs as first-class identities
• Apply lifecycle management to machines
• Assign ownership and accountability
• Enforce least privilege continuously
• Integrate IAM with application governance

Because in modern environments, machines outnumber humans and they don’t make mistakes, they amplify them.

Final Thought

The biggest IAM risk in your organization probably doesn’t belong to a person.
It belongs to a forgotten token, a stale service account, or an over-privileged integration.

Non-Human Identities are no longer a niche problem.
They are the next frontier of identity security.

Those who govern them early will stay secure.
Those who ignore them will eventually learn the hard way.