NHI
A term used in the IAM domain to denote all digital identities that do not correspond to real human users. NHIs include service accounts, API keys, OAuth clients, machine certificates, and similar entities. Governing NHIs has become a critical security challenge in the era of AI agents operating at scale.
Core Facts
Timeline (last 90 days)
Chuvakin distinguishes workforce agents (employee assistants, whose permissions are analogous to those of an employee and should be a sub-identity of the employee identity) from workload agents (business process agents, governed as non-human identities, NHI).
Non-human identity (NHI) refers to identity entities such as service accounts, bots, API keys and workload identities that do not represent a specific natural person but access resources programmatically.
Non-Human Identities (NHI) encompass service accounts, API keys, OAuth clients, machine certificates, and other identity credentials that do not belong to real human users.
Lifecycle management processes designed for long-lived service accounts largely break down in agentic scenarios, because agents may exist for only minutes and dynamically combine multiple credentials.
All Facts (4)
Non-human identity (NHI) refers to identity entities such as service accounts, bots, API keys and workload identities that do not represent a specific natural person but access resources programmatically.
65%UnverifiedChuvakin distinguishes workforce agents (employee assistants, whose permissions are analogous to those of an employee and should be a sub-identity of the employee identity) from workload agents (business process agents, governed as non-human identities, NHI).
50%UnverifiedNon-Human Identities (NHI) encompass service accounts, API keys, OAuth clients, machine certificates, and other identity credentials that do not belong to real human users.
50%UnverifiedLifecycle management processes designed for long-lived service accounts largely break down in agentic scenarios, because agents may exist for only minutes and dynamically combine multiple credentials.
50%