In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital infrastructure, the concept of "Non-Human Identity" (NHI) has emerged as a critical area of focus for enterprise identity teams and industry analysts. This heightened attention stems from the proliferation of digital assets such as microservices, Kubernetes (kube) clusters, and virtual machines (VMs) that have drastically outnumbered traditional human identities. As businesses increasingly adopt cloud and hybrid infrastructures, managing these non-human identities has become both a challenge and a necessity.
Understanding Non-Human Identity
To fully grasp the implications of NHIs, it’s essential to differentiate them from human identities. Human identities typically refer to employees, contractors, customers, and partners who interact with a company’s systems. These are straightforward to manage through traditional identity-access management (IAM) systems.
In contrast, non-human identities encompass both machine and organizational identities. Machine identities are associated with device IDs, including those for desktops, mobile devices, and Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets, as well as workload identities which pertain to containers, services, VMs, and applications. These identities are not tied to individual users but to digital entities, which makes them inherently more complex to manage.
The Security Challenges of Non-Human Identities
The sheer scale of non-human identities presents unique security challenges. In many organizations, the number of machine identities can vastly exceed the number of human users. This disparity complicates the task of securing these identities, as traditional IAM strategies were not designed to address such a large volume of digital entities.
Conventional IAM approaches focus on human users by creating accounts, assigning permissions, rotating credentials, and monitoring access patterns. However, in environments where Kubernetes clusters can spin up hundreds of pods per minute, each with its own service accounts, API keys, and certificates, a different strategy is necessary. Here, automation and centralized enforcement become crucial. This need for a new approach is further amplified by the rise of autonomous AI agents, which introduce additional complexities in access control and auditing.
Secrets Management: A Key Component
One of the primary methods for managing NHIs is through secrets management. Despite the industry’s shift towards passwordless systems, many operations still depend on key-value pairs such as secrets, tokens, and passwords. Secrets management ensures that every machine system requiring access to another is authenticated and authorized, based on policy. This practice includes secure encryption, dynamic creation of credentials, and reducing the risk associated with credentials being active for extended periods.
Certificate management also plays a vital role in authenticating devices and servers, while identity federation helps in discovering unmanaged secrets and identities, followed by appropriate remediation workflows.
Ownership and Management of NHIs
Traditionally, identity and access management teams have handled NHIs, often falling under IT or security departments. However, the rapid evolution of technology has seen DevOps and platform teams taking a more active role in managing these identities. These teams are often responsible for managing cloud IAM roles, certificate rotation, and API keys for CI/CD pipelines.
Platform engineers, who are deeply involved in machine identity management, have developed solutions that balance security with operational efficiency. Their practical experience has shown that if a security solution is cumbersome for developers, it is unlikely to be adopted effectively.
A Collaborative Approach to NHI Management
To effectively tackle the complexities of NHIs, a collaborative approach between platform and security teams is essential. Identity teams possess expertise in security controls, compliance frameworks, and risk management, while platform teams bring operational insights and an understanding of developer needs.
Together, these teams can create solutions that make secure practices the path of least resistance. This involves ensuring that security measures do not impede developers’ workflows and that platform teams incorporate security considerations into their designs. By prioritizing developer experience, organizations can implement machine identity solutions that are both secure and user-friendly.
Reducing Risks Associated with NHIs
Organizations seeking to manage NHIs effectively should focus on several key areas:
- Centralized Least-Privileged Policy: Policies must be centrally defined and automatically enforced to prevent security gaps. Manual approvals are insufficient at the scale of modern cloud infrastructures.
- Optimized Developer Experience: Developers need intuitive tools and workflows to manage NHIs. Complex systems lead to workarounds that can compromise security.
- Lifecycle Management: Continuous monitoring of NHIs is necessary to ensure that access is appropriately rotated, revoked, or generated according to policy.
How HashiCorp Can Assist
For companies grappling with the challenges of NHI management, HashiCorp offers a suite of products designed to streamline this process. Their Security Lifecycle Management portfolio helps enforce policies across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, ensuring robust control over machine identities and access.
- Vault: Manages machine identity and access through secrets, certificates, and key management.
- Vault Radar: Detects and mitigates plaintext secrets in developer environments.
- Boundary: Provides secure remote access to privileged targets and machine systems for human users.
- Consul: Facilitates the discovery and secure connection of services across any runtime.
For more information on HashiCorp’s solutions, visit their Security Lifecycle Management page.
In conclusion, as digital infrastructures become increasingly complex, the importance of managing non-human identities cannot be overstated. By adopting a collaborative, automated, and developer-friendly approach, organizations can effectively secure their digital assets and mitigate potential risks.
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