Bridging The Gap In Modern Cybersecurity

In today’s cybersecurity landscape, Non-Human identities (NHIs) are exploding in number. For every human user, there may be hundreds or even thousands of NHIs running in the background. Traditional access management tools were designed primarily for human users, and they simply can’t keep up with this new identity world.

In an average organization, machine identities now outweigh human ones by 45x.

More importantly, the critical insight many cybersecurity teams miss is that humans and NHIs are not separate entities. They’re deeply interconnected, forming a complex web of access and permissions. This interconnection means that securing one without considering the other is like locking your front door but leaving the windows wide open.

To truly secure our digital ecosystems, we need to change our approach to identity security. We need to start viewing humans and NHIs as part of a unified whole and understand their interactions, dependencies, and the unique risks they pose.

The Human Origins of Non-Human Identities

Non-Human Identities don’t spring into existence on their own. People create them for human-defined purposes.

Developers create API keys to enable inter-service communication, system administrators create service accounts to run automated processes, and DevOps engineers generate cloud identities to manage infrastructure. Each of these actions leaves a human fingerprint.

The creation process often involves human decision-making about access levels, permissions, and lifespan. Sometimes, these decisions are made hastily under tight pressure. Other times, they’re carefully considered but lack proper oversight. Also, humans often create NHIs with their own access credentials, unknowingly linking their human identity to multiple non-human ones. This creates a complex, invisible web of interconnected identities and access links, where compromising one could potentially compromise many.

The Challenges of Human-Managed NHIs

Lack of human oversight in NHI management introduces unique challenges. Orphaned identities—NHIs that outlive their purpose—are a prime example. When a project ends, or an employee leaves, their associated NHIs are often left alone, forgotten, but still active. These ghost identities are like ticking time bombs in your network.

The “Set It and Forget It” mentality exacerbates this issue. Humans tend to create NHIs with broad permissions “just in case” and then forget about them without ongoing management. Over time, these “forgotten NHIs” tend to gain excessive privileges, violating the principle of least privilege and widening the attack surface.

Human error in NHI management can have cascading effects. A misconfigured service account might expose sensitive data. An overly permissive API key could grant unintended access to critical systems. These mistakes, born of human oversight, can turn NHIs into powerful, dangerous tools for attackers.

Bridging the Human-Machine Divide

Human actions trigger NHI behaviors. An engineer pushing code to a repository might activate dozens of automated processes, each operating under its own identity. Conversely, NHI actions often require human intervention or approval, creating a two-way street of interaction. This interplay creates unique security challenges. A compromised human account could lead to the creation of rogue NHIs. An NHI with too many privileges could be exploited to elevate the privileges of a human user.  The attack surface isn’t just the sum of human and NHIs – it’s the product of their interactions.

More than 50% of companies admit they have granted inappropriate access to non-humans, and 14% don’t even know if they have.

Bridging this divide between humans and NHIs requires a new approach to identity security. We need tools and processes that can map relationships, track the flow of permissions, and proactively identify potential risk areas in real-time.

Best Practices in the New Identity Landscape

Addressing the human-NHI security challenge requires a multifaceted approach:

1. Implement Least Privilege Access: Start with the minimum permissions needed for all identities, human and non-human. Elevate privileges only when necessary and revoke them timely.
2. Continuous Monitoring and Anomaly Detection: Implement systems that track behavior across all identity types. Define a baseline for both and look for unusual patterns indicating compromise or misuse.
3. Automate Lifecycle Management: Automate the lifecycle – create, modify, and retire NHIs based on predefined policies. This reduces human error and ensures consistent security policies.
4. Regular Auditing and Rotation: An audit brings out the true picture. Conduct frequent reviews of all identities and their permissions. Rotate credentials regularly, especially for high-privilege NHIs.

The Unified Identity Graph: A Holistic View of Identity Security

The Unified Identity Graph (UIG) is a powerful tool for managing the complex interplay between human and non-human identities. It provides a comprehensive view of all identities within an organization and their relationships.

In a UIG, each identity—whether a human user, service account, or API key—is a node. The connections between these nodes represent access rights, usage patterns, and potential attack paths.

The UIG enables advanced activity attribution by tracking actions across the identity ecosystem. It can reveal how a human user’s credentials were used to create a service account, which then accessed sensitive data. This traceability is crucial for threat detection and forensic analysis.

Moreover, the UIG can identify risky identity relationships that might go unnoticed. For instance, it could flag a situation where a low-level human account has indirect high-level access through a chain of NHIs.

The Future of Identity Security: Integrating ITDR and ISPM

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) focuses on real-time monitoring and response to identity-based threats. It treats unusual identity behavior from a human user or an NHI as a potential security incident.

On the other hand, identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) is about continuously assessing and improving your overall identity security stance. It involves regular audits of identity permissions, identifying and removing excess privileges, and ensuring that identity management practices align with security best practices.

Integrating ITDR and ISPM creates a dynamic, proactive identity security strategy. ISPM reduces the attack surface by managing identities securely, while ITDR provides the capability to detect and respond quickly when attacks occur.

Conclusion: Embracing the Human Factor in NHI Security

As our digital ecosystems grow more complex, the line between human and Non-Human Identities continues to blur. Security strategies that treat these as separate domains will not work anymore. The future of identity security lies in embracing the human factor—understanding that behind every NHI is a human decision, action, or oversight. By viewing our identity landscapes holistically, implementing comprehensive security practices, and leveraging advanced tools like the Unified Identity Graph, we can build more resilient, adaptive security postures.