Managing non-human identities (NHIs) has become a paramount challenge for security teams. These identities, ranging from automated scripts and service accounts to IoT devices and third-party integrations, present a unique and often overlooked attack vector that can compromise an organization's entire security structure.
There are three main challenges to mitigating NHI risk:
For starters, NHIs possess extremely high access privileges that grant them nearly unrestricted access to sensitive data within an environment. This level of access makes NHIs highly valuable targets, and also significantly increases the potential impact of a successful attack. Compounding the issue, many of these access rights are often unnecessary or excessive for the NHIs' roles, presenting unnecessary risk to your organization.
Second, it’s typically not possible to secure NHIs with multi-factor authentication (MFA), leaving them exposed to exploitation once compromised. Unlike human users whose actions can often be monitored and controlled through authentication and behavioral analytics, NHIs typically authenticate using long-lived tokens or keys, making them ideal targets for attackers. This vulnerability makes them prime targets for attackers seeking to gain prolonged, undetected access to sensitive systems and data.
Finally, cloud environments exacerbate NHI management challenges because of their scale and dynamism. With multiple cloud providers, each employing different authentication mechanisms and lifecycle management practices, maintaining control over NHIs becomes so much harder.
How to solve these challenges
The combination of accessibility and obscurity with NHIs underscores the critical need for specialized monitoring and mitigation strategies to effectively protect against NHI-related threats. But while the challenges of NHI management in cloud environments are substantial, they are not insurmountable. Teams can significantly enhance their defenses against NHI attacks by adopting a comprehensive approach that integrates:
- Robust inventorying: Maintain up-to-date records of all NHIs and their associated permissions. Teams must catalog all NHIs across the infrastructure, including those used by third-party services and cloud providers. This visibility is foundational. For example, consider a scenario where a developer integrates a third-party SaaS tool with access to critical data repositories like GitHub or Google Drive. If the third-party suffers a breach, the tokens used by NHIs could be compromised, allowing attackers to impersonate these identities and exploit their permissions.
- Proactive monitoring: Deploy monitoring systems capable of identifying suspicious behaviors and unauthorized access attempts by NHIs. Monitoring NHIs for anomalies in runtime becomes crucial—detecting unusual access patterns or locations can signal potential compromises. For instance, an access token used by an application to connect to an S3 bucket from an unauthorized location should trigger immediate action, such as token revocation and investigation.
- Adaptive security measures: Implement proactive response tactics that include the full context of the attack, With contextual understanding around NHIs and their usage/ behavior, teams can confidently deprecate unused NHIs, services, or cloud assets, eliminating unnecessary risks. Additionally, it’s possible to prevent privilege escalations and lateral movement by adjusting permissions based on actual usage patterns, ensuring that both human and non-human identities operate with the least privilege necessary.
Managing NHI risks requires a structured approach that spans the entire lifecycle of these identities. This includes implementing controls to minimize the blast radius of compromised NHIs, such as short-lived tokens and least privilege principles. But no matter what controls are in place, an attacker can still potentially slip through the cracks. That’s why it’s now necessary to have an established protocol for swift response to suspected compromises, including automated revocation of compromised tokens and incident response procedures.
Eyal Fisher, co-founder and chief product officer, Sweet Security
