Optimizing Non-Human Identity (NHI) Management: Use Cases for RFP and POC

Managing Non-Human Identities (NHI) in modern cloud environments is increasingly complex due to the rapid growth of cloud-native applications, automation scripts, and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). Organizations evaluating vendors for NHI management must ensure their solutions comprehensively cover the entire NHI lifecycle, from governance and provisioning to security posture management, monitoring, and incident response.

This document outlines essential NHI use cases for Request for Proposal (RFP) and Proof of Concept (POC) evaluations. By leveraging these use cases, organizations can enhance the security and governance of NHIs across their environments. Consulting with NHI subject matter experts (SMEs) can further refine these processes, ensuring alignment with security architecture, compliance requirements, and operational needs.

Additionally, organizations can engage with the NHI Linked Group Network to access vendor-agnostic expertise, facilitating informed decision-making in vendor selection, architecture design, and integration strategies.

Governance and Lifecycle Use Cases

NHI Identity Creation

• Establish structured processes for provisioning NHIs with well-defined authentication and authorization methods tailored to specific applications and roles.

Application Access and Identification Tracking

• Monitor which applications interact with NHIs, how they authenticate (e.g., roles, tags), and assess the ongoing appropriateness of their access.

Entitlement Management

• Define and adjust NHI entitlements as consuming applications evolve, ensuring that only necessary privileges are granted.

Approval Workflow for NHI Access

• Implement structured approval workflows, requiring sign-off from business owners and security custodians before NHIs gain access to services.

Usage Tracking and Entitlement Validation

• Continuously monitor NHIs and their entitlements, triggering workflows to enforce least privilege models or decommission unused NHIs.

NHI De-provisioning and Sunset Policies

• Track application lifecycles to ensure timely de-provisioning or disabling of NHIs when no longer needed.

Periodic Validation of NHI Requirements

• Conduct regular audits between application owners to confirm ongoing NHI access needs.

Diverse NHI Use Cases

• NHIs encompass a broad range of entities, including business applications, CI/CD pipelines, IaC modules, Configuration-as-Code (CaC) tools (e.g., Ansible), and operational scripts.

Ownership and Accountability

• Maintain clear tracking of business and technical owners, ensuring responsibility for servicing and consuming applications.

Criticality and Risk Profiling

• Assign risk profiles to NHIs based on the sensitivity of the data they handle and the potential security impact on consuming applications.

Security Posture Management Use Cases

Code and Configuration Scanning

• Perform scans to detect NHIs embedded in files, repositories, or environments outside secure storage solutions (e.g., secrets managers, KMS).

IAM Policy Analysis

• Continuously assess IAM policies governing NHIs and the associated secret management systems (e.g., KMS, Vault).

Log Integration for Security Monitoring

• Ensure logs from critical management systems (e.g., KMS, HSM, Vaults) are integrated with security tools such as SIEM, XDR, and ITDR.

Kubernetes and IAM Role Mapping

• Validate that Kubernetes-defined roles align with IAM roles, maintaining secure access for NHIs.

Infrastructure Tagging for Security and Monitoring

• Enforce proper tagging of NHIs across infrastructure to improve classification, monitoring, and security policy enforcement.

Ingress and Egress Controls

• Assess how NHIs interact with servicing and consuming applications, including secret management solutions and workload instances.

Endpoint and Malware Protection

• Ensure NHIs interacting with compute instances, data repositories, and workloads are covered by robust endpoint security and malware detection.

Network Security and Segmentation

• Implement threat monitoring, micro-segmentation, and service mesh controls to regulate NHI access at the network level.

Monitoring and Detection Use Cases

Auditing Authentication and Authorization Events

• Continuously audit NHI authentication and authorization logs to detect unauthorized access attempts or misuse.

Behavioral Profiling of NHIs

• Establish baselines for NHI activity using human-defined parameters, including frequency, application roles, and resource tagging.

Machine Learning-Based Baseline Refinement

• Utilize AI/ML models to refine NHI activity baselines based on historical usage trends and evolving patterns.

Anomaly Detection and Threat Identification

• Leverage rule-based and AI-driven monitoring to detect deviations from expected NHI behavior, flagging potential security incidents.

Monitoring Suspicious Human Activity

• Identify instances where human users attempt to mimic NHI behavior, potentially indicating insider threats or credential compromise.

Correlating Business Activities with Data Movement

• Track NHI-driven business processes and correlate them with data ingress/egress events to prevent unauthorized data access or exfiltration.

Incident Response Use Cases

Automated Incident Response Playbooks

• Deploy automated workflows to disable or lock compromised NHIs in response to security incidents.

Credential Rotation Automation

• Automate credential rotation for compromised NHIs to prevent further misuse.

NHI Replacement and Application Adjustments

• If an NHI is compromised, trigger playbooks to provision a replacement identity and reconfigure applications, accordingly, ensuring continued security.

Conclusion

Selecting an effective NHI management vendor requires a thorough understanding of an organization’s security framework, compliance obligations, and operational dependencies. The outlined use cases serve as a foundational reference for evaluating vendors, ensuring they can support the entire NHI lifecycle with robust security controls.

By integrating these use cases into RFP and POC processes, organizations can confidently assess vendor capabilities and implement a solution that safeguards applications and infrastructure in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

Article Reference - Viresh Garg