20 Critical Characteristics of Non-Human Identities You Need to Know

Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are digital credentials used by applications, services, and automated processes to authenticate and authorize actions within an organization's IT infrastructure. 

They are integral to modern IT environments, enabling seamless automation and inter-service communication. However, their unique characteristics present significant cybersecurity challenges that differ from those associated with human identities.

Key Characteristics of NHIs:

1. Incompatibility with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): NHIs cannot interact with traditional MFA methods designed for human users, making MFA implementation challenging.
    
2. Limited Control Over Usage: Organizations may lack comprehensive visibility into how NHIs are utilized by internal teams, partners, and external customers, increasing security risks.
    
3. Credential Confidentiality: Best practices dictate that NHI credentials should remain concealed from both human users and unauthorized programs, retrieved dynamically at runtime.
    
4. Wide Impact if Compromised: A compromised NHI can lead to widespread disruptions, affecting multiple systems simultaneously due to their broad access rights.
    
5. Elevated Privileges: NHIs often have higher privileges than human administrators, making them attractive targets for attackers.
    
6. Lack of Lifecycle Management: NHIs may be created for specific tasks and then forgotten, leading to orphaned accounts that remain active without oversight.
    
7. Challenges in Anomaly Detection: The predictable behavior patterns of NHIs can mask unauthorized actions, complicating anomaly detection efforts.
    
8. Credential Leakage in Testing and Staging Environments: Using identical credentials across production, testing, and staging environments can inadvertently expose production credentials to broader teams.
    
9. Inadequate Credential Management: Storing NHI credentials in code or configuration files poses significant security risks, as malicious users can recreate scenarios to issue the same credentials.
    
10. Legacy Application Challenges: Many legacy applications were developed without considering dynamic identity verification, making it difficult to remove hard-coded credentials.
     
11. Susceptibility to Malware and Insider Threats: Compromised virtual machines or containers can allow malware or insiders to access and misuse NHI credentials.
     
12. Inadequate Consideration in Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) Solutions: Many ITDR solutions primarily focus on human identities, overlooking workload identity attributes crucial for detecting NHI-related threats.
     
13. Dynamic and Ephemeral Nature: NHIs are often transient, existing for short periods, requiring dynamic provisioning and de-provisioning without manual intervention.
     
14. Cross-Boundary Trust Requirements: NHIs frequently operate in multi-cloud or hybrid environments, necessitating authentication across disparate trust domains.
     
15. Incompatibility with Traditional Security Measures: Traditional security measures may not effectively apply to NHIs, requiring task-specific, continuous, and granular checks.
     
16. Elevated Risk Due to Static Credentials: Storing static credentials for NHIs increases the risk of unauthorized access, especially if not regularly rotated or embedded in code.
     
17. Complexity in Monitoring and Auditing: The high volume and automated nature of NHIs make monitoring and auditing challenging, necessitating effective logging mechanisms.
     
18. Dependency on Secure Configuration Management: The security of NHIs heavily depends on proper configuration management; misconfigurations can lead to unauthorized access.
     
19. Necessity for Specialized Security Policies: NHIs require security policies tailored to their unique characteristics, differing from those designed for human users.
     
20. Reliance on Service-to-Service Communication: NHIs facilitate service-to-service communication, requiring secure data and credential exchange between services.

Understanding these characteristics is crucial for developing effective security strategies to manage and protect NHIs within an organization's IT infrastructure.

Conclusion

Non-Human Identities are an indispensable part of modern IT ecosystems, enabling automation, scalability, and interconnectivity. However, their unique characteristics pose distinct security challenges that demand tailored strategies. By understanding and addressing these challenges—ranging from credential management and anomaly detection to lifecycle governance and compliance—organizations can strengthen their cybersecurity posture and ensure the safe operation of their IT infrastructures. Proactive measures, dynamic security solutions, and adherence to best practices are key to managing the risks associated with NHIs.

Article Source: Viresh Garg