Most Organizations Know How Many Employees They Have.
Do They Know How Many Machine Identities They Have?
Ask most organizations:
How many employees do you have?
They can usually produce an answer quickly.
Ask instead:
How many machine identities exist across your environment?
The answer is often much harder to determine.
That difference matters.
Modern enterprises depend on applications, workloads, cloud services, APIs, automation, containers, devices, and increasingly AI agents communicating with one another continuously.
Those systems need identities too.
They may authenticate using:
- service accounts
- API keys
- certificates
- OAuth tokens
- workload identities
- SSH keys
- application secrets
- cloud roles
- access tokens
Collectively, these are commonly described as machine identities or non-human identities (NHIs).
The security problem is straightforward:
Organizations have spent years creating strong governance around human identities, but the controls applied to machines are often much less mature.
An employee may go through formal onboarding, MFA enrollment, access approval, periodic access reviews, behavioral monitoring, and immediate termination when they leave.
A service account created five years ago may still have administrative access—and nobody may remember why it exists.
OWASP now maintains a dedicated Non-Human Identities Top 10, reflecting the growing importance of security risks involving application identities, service accounts, API credentials, secrets, and other machine credentials. OWASP specifically calls out risks including improper offboarding, secret leakage, NHI reuse, and human use of non-human credentials. OWASP Foundation
Machine identity security should therefore no longer be treated as a specialized PKI or DevOps problem.
It is becoming a core component of enterprise identity security.
1. What Is a Machine Identity?
A machine identity represents a non-human entity that needs to prove who or what it is in order to access another system or resource.
That entity might be:
- an application
- server
- container
- cloud workload
- API
- automation process
- database integration
- IoT device
- backup system
- CI/CD pipeline
- AI agent
Humans typically authenticate with something such as a password, passkey, smart card, or security key.
Machines may authenticate with:
- certificates
- API keys
- tokens
- secrets
- service credentials
- SSH keys
- cloud-native workload identities
OWASP describes non-human identities as application identities associated with credentials or secrets that allow applications to authenticate to other systems, including both internal services and third-party SaaS platforms. OWASP Foundation
The concept itself is not new.
What has changed is the scale, automation, and privilege associated with these identities.
2. Why Machine Identities Become Invisible
Human identities usually have recognizable owners.
An employee belongs to a department.
A contractor has a sponsor.
An administrator has a job role.
Machine identities are often different.
They may be created by:
- developers
- cloud automation
- deployment pipelines
- infrastructure-as-code
- third-party applications
- SaaS integrations
- scripts
- security products
- managed service providers
Once created, the identity may continue operating for years.
The original developer may leave.
The project may be renamed.
The application may migrate to another platform.
The documentation may disappear.
But the identity remains active.
This creates a common security condition:
The credential is still trusted even though nobody clearly owns it.
Machine identities also frequently exist across multiple technology teams.
IAM may manage some service accounts.
DevOps may manage secrets.
Network teams may manage certificates.
Cloud teams may manage workload identities.
Developers may maintain API keys.
Security operations may monitor only some of them.
Without centralized visibility, it becomes difficult to answer basic questions such as:
How many non-human identities exist?
Which ones have privileged access?
Who owns them?
Which credentials are stale?
Which systems depend on them?
That is the machine-identity visibility gap.
3. Credentials Often Live Too Long
Long-lived credentials create one of the most persistent machine-identity risks.
Consider examples such as:
- an API key created three years ago
- a service-account password that has never been changed
- an unmanaged TLS certificate
- a secret embedded inside a script
- an SSH key copied between servers
- a cloud access key associated with a retired workload
- an application credential still belonging to a former employee
The longer a credential remains valid, the longer an attacker can potentially use it after compromise.
This is especially dangerous because machine credentials can be exposed in many places:
- source-code repositories
- configuration files
- CI/CD systems
- container images
- scripts
- logs
- environment variables
- developer workstations
- shared documentation
And unlike an employee, a machine identity does not call the help desk when something feels suspicious.
An exposed credential may continue operating normally while being abused.
4. Reuse Expands the Blast Radius
A common operational shortcut is reusing the same non-human identity across multiple systems.
For example, an organization may use the same credential in:
Development
Testing
Staging
Production
Or the same service account might support several applications.
This simplifies administration.
It also creates a larger blast radius.
If one environment is compromised, the attacker may obtain credentials that work elsewhere.
OWASP specifically identifies NHI Reuse as a major non-human identity risk. Its guidance notes that reusing an identity across applications, services, or components can allow compromise in one area to provide unauthorized access elsewhere. OWASP Foundation
From a forensic perspective, reuse also creates another problem:
Attribution becomes harder.
If five applications use the same identity, which one generated the suspicious activity?
If administrators also know the password, was the action performed by an application or by a person?
Unique identities make both security and investigation easier.
5. Offboarding Is Often Weaker for Machines Than Humans
When an employee leaves an organization, mature IAM programs typically trigger a defined process:
- disable the user account
- terminate active sessions
- revoke access
- recover devices
- remove group memberships
- disable privileged accounts
Now consider what happens when an application is retired.
Is its service account disabled?
Are its API keys revoked?
Are its certificates removed?
Are cloud permissions deleted?
Are third-party integrations terminated?
Often, the answer is less clear.
OWASP ranks Improper Offboarding as the first risk in its 2025 Non-Human Identities Top 10, describing the problem as failing to deactivate or remove service accounts, access keys, and other non-human identities when they are no longer required. OWASP Foundation
These orphaned identities create persistent attack paths.
An application may be gone.
The credential may still work.
6. Privilege Makes Machine Identity Risk More Serious
Many machine identities are not low-privilege identities.
They may require access to:
- production databases
- backup systems
- cloud infrastructure
- source repositories
- customer records
- Active Directory
- CI/CD platforms
- administrative APIs
This means a compromised machine identity may provide significant access without requiring an attacker to compromise a human administrator.
A backup service account is a good example.
It may require access across large parts of the infrastructure.
If compromised, it could become valuable during a ransomware attack.
The same principle applies to deployment automation.
A CI/CD credential may have authority to:
- deploy code
- modify cloud resources
- retrieve secrets
- access production environments
Machine identity security is therefore closely related to Privileged Access Management.
PAM programs increasingly need to address privileged machines—not only privileged humans.
7. Human Use of Machine Identities Creates an Accountability Problem
Another common practice is allowing developers or administrators to manually use service accounts.
Someone may know the service-account password and use it to:
- log into a server
- troubleshoot an application
- run a database command
- perform an administrative task
This creates several problems.
The user may bypass their normal MFA requirements.
Actions become attributed to the shared service account instead of the individual.
Privilege may exceed what the employee’s personal account normally allows.
OWASP’s NHI Top 10 specifically identifies Human Use of NHI as a risk because developers or administrators may use non-human credentials for manual tasks that should instead be performed through individual human identities. OWASP Foundation
The preferred model is:
Human activity → human identity
Application activity → unique application identity
That separation improves accountability and investigation.
8. AI Agents Add Another Identity Layer
AI agents make the machine-identity problem even more important.
Traditional applications generally execute predefined workflows.
An AI agent may operate more dynamically.
It might:
- retrieve information
- query databases
- access documents
- invoke APIs
- send messages
- create tickets
- modify records
- launch workflows
To perform those actions, the AI agent needs an identity.
That identity may use:
- OAuth tokens
- service accounts
- API keys
- workload identities
- delegated user permissions
This introduces important questions:
Whose authority is the agent operating under?
What systems can it access?
What actions can it take?
Can those permissions be revoked quickly?
Can its activity be distinguished from a human user?
OWASP’s agentic security work explicitly maps agentic risks such as identity and privilege abuse back to non-human identity risks including leaked credentials, weak lifecycle governance, and excessive privilege. OWASP Gen AI Security Project
AI security is therefore rapidly becoming an identity-security problem.
9. Build a Non-Human Identity Inventory
Organizations cannot govern identities they cannot see.
The first practical step is building an inventory.
For each machine or non-human identity, record:
Identity
What is the identity?
Owner
Which team or individual is responsible for it?
Purpose
Why does it exist?
Privileges
What systems and data can it access?
Credential Type
Does it use:
- password
- certificate
- API key
- token
- SSH key
- workload identity
Creation Date
How long has it existed?
Last Use
Is the identity still active?
Rotation Policy
When was the credential last changed?
Connected Systems
Which applications depend on it?
Environment
Does it belong to:
- development
- test
- staging
- production
This inventory creates the foundation for lifecycle governance.
10. Eliminate Identities That No Longer Have a Purpose
Discovery often identifies identities that should simply be removed.
Examples include:
- credentials associated with retired applications
- unused API keys
- old service accounts
- certificates belonging to decommissioned infrastructure
- automation identities belonging to abandoned projects
Organizations should define processes for:
Creation
Ownership
Review
Rotation
Revocation
Deletion
Machine identity should have a lifecycle just like human identity.
If an identity has no owner and no clear business purpose, it should not remain trusted indefinitely.
11. Move Toward Short-Lived Credentials
One of the strongest ways to reduce machine-identity risk is minimizing reliance on permanent secrets.
Where platforms support it, organizations should consider:
- ephemeral workload credentials
- managed cloud identities
- dynamic secrets
- automated credential rotation
- short-lived tokens
- automated certificate renewal
OWASP guidance for Kubernetes, for example, recommends using short-lived authentication tokens because leaked credentials may expire before an attacker can continue using them. OWASP Kubernetes Top Ten
The underlying principle is simple:
A credential that automatically expires creates a smaller attack window than one that remains valid indefinitely.
This can also reduce the operational burden of manual password rotation.
12. Certificates Are Machine Identities Too
Machine identity security is sometimes discussed as if it only means API keys and service accounts.
Certificates are equally important.
Certificates authenticate:
- websites
- servers
- workloads
- devices
- APIs
- applications
Organizations need visibility into:
- certificate owner
- issuing authority
- expiration date
- key algorithm
- key length
- dependent systems
- renewal process
Expired certificates can create outages.
Compromised private keys can create security incidents.
Unmanaged certificates can create both.
This is also where machine identity begins overlapping with another emerging challenge:
post-quantum cryptography.
13. Machine Identity and Quantum Readiness Are Converging
Organizations preparing for post-quantum cryptography need to understand where vulnerable cryptography exists.
That includes:
- certificates
- public/private key pairs
- TLS
- authentication infrastructure
- digital signatures
- machine-to-machine communication
Many of those cryptographic assets are also machine identities.
For example, a TLS certificate simultaneously represents:
an identity problem
and
a cryptographic dependency.
This means a strong machine-identity inventory can become an important foundation for future crypto-agility.
The same discovery process helps answer:
What machine is this certificate identifying?
Which cryptographic algorithm does it use?
Who owns it?
What depends on it?
Can it be replaced automatically?
Identity governance and cryptographic discovery are beginning to converge.
14. The SOC Needs Visibility Into Machine Behavior
Inventory and governance are only part of the problem.
Machine identities also need monitoring.
Security operations should look for events such as:
- service-account login from an unexpected host
- API key used from a new location
- workload identity accessing a new resource
- certificate used unexpectedly
- new credential creation
- unusual authentication volume
- privilege escalation
- interactive login using a service identity
Behavioral context becomes especially important because machine identities normally behave predictably.
A backup service account should interact with known backup systems.
A database integration should connect to known databases.
A sudden deviation can be meaningful.
That makes machine-identity telemetry valuable for:
- SIEM
- UEBA
- threat hunting
- incident response
15. Zero Trust Must Include Machines
Zero Trust is frequently summarized as:
Never trust, always verify.
But many implementations focus almost entirely on employees.
A mature Zero Trust architecture should evaluate machine identities too.
Before granting access, organizations should consider:
Who or what is requesting access?
Is the identity legitimate?
What resource is being requested?
Is the requested privilege necessary?
Is the credential healthy?
Is the behavior expected?
The policy should apply whether the request originates from:
- a user
- an application
- a workload
- an API
- an AI agent
Identity is identity.
A Practical Machine Identity Security Roadmap
Organizations do not need to solve the entire problem at once.
Start with five steps.
1. Discover
Inventory:
- service accounts
- API keys
- certificates
- tokens
- secrets
- workload identities
- AI agents
2. Establish Ownership
Every identity should have:
- a business purpose
- a technical owner
- a lifecycle
3. Assess Privilege
Identify:
- privileged identities
- shared credentials
- cross-environment reuse
- unnecessary access
4. Reduce Credential Lifetime
Prioritize:
- managed identities
- short-lived tokens
- automated rotation
- certificate lifecycle automation
5. Monitor
Bring machine authentication and privilege activity into the SOC.
The objective is not simply to build another inventory spreadsheet.
It is to create continuous lifecycle visibility.
The Identity Perimeter Is No Longer Human
Identity-security programs were originally designed around employees.
The modern enterprise looks different.
Users still matter.
But they now operate alongside:
- workloads
- APIs
- applications
- cloud services
- automation
- certificates
- devices
- AI agents
Every one of those entities can have access.
Every one can be overprivileged.
Every one can become compromised.
And every one needs governance.
That is why machine identity should become part of the same identity-security model organizations already apply to people.
How Velocis Approaches Machine Identity Security
At Velocis Technologies, we see machine identity as the convergence point between several security disciplines.
Identity & Zero Trust
Understand what entities exist and what they should be permitted to access.
IAM & PAM
Govern both normal and privileged non-human access.
Security Operations
Monitor authentication and behavioral activity continuously.
AI Security
Control the identities and permissions used by AI agents.
Q-SOC™ & Quantum Readiness
Extend visibility into certificates, cryptographic keys, algorithms, and machine-to-machine trust.
The objective is to move from:
Unknown identities
to
Inventoried identities
to
Governed identities
to
Continuously monitored identities.
Do You Know How Many Machine Identities Exist in Your Environment?
If the answer is uncertain, that itself is useful information.
A Velocis Machine Identity Discovery Assessment can help organizations identify and prioritize:
- service accounts
- API keys
- certificates
- workload identities
- privileged NHIs
- stale credentials
- shared credentials
- AI agent identities
- cryptographic dependencies
The goal is to understand the machine-identity attack surface before an attacker does.
Request a Velocis Machine Identity Discovery Assessment
→ Talk to Velocis about Identity & Zero Trust
→ Download the Velocis Identity Security Readiness Checklist