Organizations often treat human and non-human identities (NHIs) as separate security challenges. This siloed approach made sense in traditional data centers. However, the rapid adoption of cloud services and SaaS applications has fundamentally changed how identities interact and how to secure them. Managing human and machine identities separately creates security blind spots as they become increasingly interconnected through cloud services.

From human to machine: The evolving Identity landscape

Just look at two of the top risks identified in OWASP's Non-Human Identity Top 10 for 2025: improper offboarding of service accounts and overprivileged machine identities. When a human employee leaves, their corporate account might get deactivated, but what about all the service accounts, API keys, and automation scripts they created? And those machine identities often accumulate more privileges than they need — a problem that compounds when you can't trace them back to their human owners

Here's how deeply intertwined human and non-human identities have become:

• SaaS and IaaS user identities, originally designed for human use, are now repurposed as service accounts for integrations and automation.
• Machine-created tokens and keys inherit permissions from their human owners while maintaining separate access patterns.
• Service accounts and their secrets, created and managed by human employees, blur traditional identity boundaries.
• Both human employees and cloud resources increasingly access sensitive data through shared role identities.

This challenge stems from how the modern enterprise Identity landscape has evolved into an intricate web of interconnected identities. What makes this relationship unique is how human and machine identities have become inseparable. Human identities serve as the foundation and control point for non-human identities, while NHIs extend and amplify human capabilities across cloud platforms. 

This interdependency isn't just about volume; it's also about complexity. A single technical employee today might be the originator of or have access to dozens of non-human identities, each with its own credentials, privileges, access patterns, and security implications across multiple cloud platforms and SaaS applications.

Each of these identities has its own permissions, access patterns, and security risks, which brings us to our next challenge.

Understanding the human-NHI security relationship

Consider this common scenario: a senior development and operations engineer who manages multiple critical service accounts submits their resignation. Beyond the immediate challenge of access removal, organizations face significant risks in identifying and remediating over-permissioned service accounts. 

These risks manifest in various ways across the enterprise: orphaned service accounts remain active long after employee departures, untracked API keys continue floating in deployment scripts, and machine identities initially created for temporary projects become permanent fixtures in the infrastructure. Further complicating the situation are break-glass credentials that never undergo rotation and shared department accounts and mailboxes that lack clear ownership designation.

This challenge isn't just technical — it's organizational. Human employees are the creators, owners, and managers of NHIs. When they leave or change roles, the tangled web of identities they've created doesn't magically untangle itself, and critical security risks can go unnoticed without clear ownership for remediation.

This is where segmentation becomes crucial. While both human and non-human identities need protection, they require different security approaches:

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
  • A human account without MFA is an immediate security risk that needs addressing. All human identities should have MFA with strong phishing-resistant factors like Okta FastPass.
  • Service accounts used for automation often don't require MFA since MFA is designed for human interaction. Expecting MFA may be a non-actionable risk for security teams; alternative solutions like Okta Privileged Access can help secure access to these accounts.
• Single sign-on (SSO)
  • A human account with a local account should be federated to enable SSO login through Okta.
  • Service and break-glass accounts may be configured for direct login design, but their credentials can be vaulted and managed through Okta Privileged Access to enforce security policies.
• Unused accounts
  • An unused human account likely needs de-provisioning.
  • An unused service account might be for critical but infrequent backup processes.
• Least privilege
  • Human employees may log in from various locations, such as abroad, the office, or home, depending on their work needs. 
  • Service accounts used for automation and integrations must operate within a predefined IP range to minimize security risks. Any deviation in service account behavior, such as accessing resources from an unexpected IP, should trigger an immediate alert due to the high risk of compromise.
• Usage anomalies:
  • Human employees may log in from various locations: abroad, at the office, or home, depending on their work needs.
  • Machine-to-machine accounts for automation must stay within a predefined IP range. Deviation in Identity behavior should trigger an immediate alert due to the high risk of compromise.

A unified path forward

As organizations continue their cloud transformation journeys, the line between human and non-human identities grows blurrier. The solution isn't to treat them as separate problems but to implement a comprehensive Identity security strategy that:

• Understands the relationships between different Identity types
• Applies appropriate security controls based on context
• Maintains clear ownership and lifecycle management
• Provides visibility across all identity types and their interactions

We've built Okta Identity Security Posture Management with this holistic approach in mind. Securing human identities while leaving NHIs unmanaged (or vice versa) is like locking your front door but leaving all your windows open.

The future of Identity security lies in solutions that can handle the complexity of modern Identity relationships while remaining manageable for security teams. It's time to stop treating human and non-human identities as separate challenges and start seeing them as they are — two sides of the same security coin.

Ready to learn more about how your organization can better manage the convergence of human and non-human identities? Connect with Okta to discover how Okta Identity Security Posture Management can help you tackle these challenges.