In the olden days, pre-digital transformation, identity and access management (IAM) revolved around securing access for its users – its human users.
The digital world is now growing accustomed to the massive shift in foundation thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) proliferating through every industry. Humans make up less than half of the users in the digital sphere, outnumbered instead by bots, AI agents, service accounts and more.
These non-human identities (NHI) and agentic AI systems have cemented their role as the way of the future.
But don’t celebrate too soon about the newfound speed of your workflows. All those new identities will need to be secured and monitored, or risk inviting unprecedented organizational liability.
It’s no longer enough to simply focus on managing human identities.
Governing delegated authority
In every science fiction story, AI makes life so much easier for its creators that they soon adopt it into every facet of life, only for it to become the villain by abusing its designated authority.
Are we on the same path?
No.
In the real world, giving NHIs the authority to make decisions, initiate actions, request access and orchestrate workflows allows them to easily be overtaken by nefarious human villains exploiting your lack of NHI security. These cybercriminals often even use their own NHIs against your sprawling AI agents to streamline their own workflows, creating an NHI vs. NHI vortex that can result in compliance fines and reputational damage for you.
So how can you defend these hundreds or thousands of NHIs against the proverbial villain while keeping the operational efficiency they offer? Especially at an enterprise scale?
Treating NHIs like the users they are
Every identity, whether non-human or human, should be treated as a user. A user that operates 24/7, but a user, nonetheless.
This includes enforcing the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), full lifecycle management, continuous verification and comprehensive auditability for human users and NHIs alike.
One Identity: Leading the NHI conversation
One Identity starts with the philosophy of Zero Trust security for every identity and every access instance, creating a more secure, more compliant and more scalable organizational architecture.
Every identity, every time
No matter what kind of identity attempts access, One Identity governance solutions are programmed with rigorous authentication checks and continuous monitoring. No human or machine can access resources, especially privileged resources, without going through the same PoLP processes.
Every access request goes through context analysis that involves scrutiny of:
-
Who is requesting access
-
Why access is being requested
-
How the request is initiated
-
What risks are present in real time
On-premises, hybrid and cloud environments
The One Identity portfolio integrates AI responsibly and securely within their solutions, providing full governance to every identity across on-premises infrastructures, hybrid environments and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
Simplicity is key. One Identity governance solutions enable transparency no matter the environment, blanketing your entire organization in scalable security from manageable consoles without sacrificing the intelligent, streamlined automations provided by AI.
Without business slowdown
Compliance and innovation are in constant battle, but identity and access management (IAM) products from One Identity bear this struggle in mind.
To effectively govern proliferating NHIs, One Identity provides guardrails instead of gates – empowering organizations to satisfy compliance through rigorous NHI monitoring and real-time anomaly detection.
This has the opposite effect of the stereotypical business blockages, instead accelerating business growth and operations by keeping any would-be audit slowdowns at bay.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity is growing accustomed to the AI boom, though the implications of AI as an identity are often deeply overlooked. Without securing non-human identities (NHIs), companies are alerting malicious actors to vulnerabilities that could bring their digital empires crumbling to the ground.
One Identity has made it its mission to secure NHIs by shaping how enterprises think about AI agents, delegated authority and AI-driven access at scale.
