Harnessing Non-Human Identity: Why robust NHI management is a strategic advantage
Sep 12, 2024
Sameera Kelkar
Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are crucial in today’s digital landscape. These digital identities, from service accounts to access keys & API tokens, interact with various resources to drive business operations. These Non-Human Identities are often targeted by attackers for their elevated privileges and the sensitive data they can access. When properly managed, Non-Human Identities can become a strategic business advantage that empowers organizations to drive growth.
Securing and managing the proliferation of NHIs has become more critical than ever for security leaders looking to harness the power of NHIs, while still protecting their organizations from evolving threats.
The Power of Non-Human Identities
NHIs unlock automation and allow organizations to adopt technology. This improves workforce productivity, eliminates manual processes, and even bolsters security with increased observability.
Some examples of powerful business processes powered by Non-Human Identities include:
System Integrations: facilitate interactions between disconnected software systems through APIs.
Generative AI, Copilots, and Bots: provide AI models with access to data, perform tasks, and integrate with other software without human intervention.
Accelerated Innovation: increase developer velocity and pace of innovation with automated code deployment, system configuration, and monitoring.
Challenges with Non-Human Identity Management
The examples above underscore the critical role that Non-Human Identities play in today’s digital landscape. However, their extensive access also makes these identities attractive targets for bad actors – a compromised NHI is a golden ticket to sensitive data and critical systems.
Exacerbating the risk, security teams often struggle to maintain visibility and control over the NHIs across their systems. As organizations grow and the number of NHIs increases exponentially, scalability issues can arise quickly. Effective lifecycle management of NHIs is another significant challenge. Without proper processes and tools, organizations risk accumulating obsolete or overprivileged NHIs, expanding their attack surface.
Best Practices for Securing NHIs
With Non-Human Identities here to stay, security leaders must adopt robust approaches to secure and manage these entities. Here are a few best practices that can help establish strong Non-Human Identity management:
Effective lifecycle management: Utilize tools like Natoma to gain visibility and control over all NHIs in your environment, throughout their lifecycle. This ensures that NHIs are not forgotten or left unmanaged.
Frequent auditing: Review and update NHI permissions often to ensure they are aligned with current business needs, reducing the potential impact of a compromised NHI.
On-demand and policy-based rotation: Map the downstream permissions for each NHI to reduce the risk of outages when rotating credentials. By understanding how a Non-Human Identity is used across systems, organizations can ensure rotations are not disruptive.
Regular Security Updates: Keep software and hardware that utilize machine identities up-to-date with the latest security patches, to avoid exposure to known vulnerabilities.
Embracing Non-Human Identities for Growth
Effectively managing Non-Human Identities both enhances security and drives business innovation and growth.
Adopting a comprehensive Non-Human Identity management solution can become a strategic advantage by empowering organizations to tap into the power of automation, GenAI, and integrations to accelerate their business. This allows them to focus on delivering value to their customers and maintaining a strong security posture, without being bogged down by the complexities of NHI management.
Natoma’s solutions are designed to address the complex challenges of Non-Human Identity management, and ultimately help enterprises secure their digital assets. With Natoma’s innovative solutions, enterprises can turn potential risks into growth opportunities, to achieve a secure and prosperous digital future.
Contact Natoma today to discover how our solutions can transform your Non-Human Identity management and propel your business forward.