IAM + PAM for Non-Human Identities: Building the Governance Stack

Last updated on September 21st, 2026 at 08:11 am

Most security teams have locked down human access over the years. Multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls, quarterly review of access – the standard arsenal. Here’s the number that should make any security architect pause: organizations currently operate with 10-45 non-human identities for every human user.

Service accounts. API keys. OAuth tokens. CI/CD pipeline credentials—containerized workloads. AI agents invoked external APIs at 3 am. Not all of them are reflected in your regular identity review process. They don’t all receive a Slack message asking, “Do you still need this access?” And still they are working, and they are working with sometimes high privileges on your most sensitive systems.

That’s not a gap. That’s a governance crisis.

The profession of IAM + PAM for Non-Human Identities: Building the Governance Stack has shifted in less than two years from a niche issue to a governance-level agenda, as AI adoption has placed tens of millions of automated identities within enterprise environments. The governance model is no longer a choice; it is now table stakes for compliance, safety, an,d minimum security hygiene ta

What “Non-Human Identity” Actually Means

It is better to clarify the problem space before getting into solutions.
Any digital identity not assigned to a human logging in with a keyboard is known as a non-human identity (NHI). Palo Alto Networks’ cyberpedia mentions service accounts, application credentials, API keys, machine certificates, OAuth tokens, and, increasingly, AI agents and autonomous workloads.

NHIs are not only risky, but in a certain sense. It’s their behavior:

• They rarely rotate them until something breaks.
• They are usually developed by people who leave the company.
• Permissions accumulate without review.
• They don’t raise alarms like human accounts.
• They are often exchanged with several services.

I have seen setups where a single service account, set up to perform a one-off data migration four years prior, still had write access to production databases because no one considered decommissioning it. Attackers seek orphaned credentials like these.

The NHIMG community makes it simple: the biggest challenges aren’t technical. They are running – they are not visible, not possessed by anyone, and have no lifecycle process.

Why Traditional IAM Alone Can’t Fix This

The Human-Centric Design Problem

Identity and access management tools are built on a fundamental assumption: a person is on one end. Password resets, multifactor authentication prompts, access certification emails – all humans can be involved.

NHIs don’t reply to certification emails. They don’t log in through SSO. They can authenticate using secrets, certificates, or tokens, which are frequently hard-coded in config files or in environment variables.

In neither of the standard IAM deployments that I have seen, non-human accounts are either aggregated into generic service account categories with no meaningful ownership tagging, or entirely out of scope of the IAM at all – operated informally by developers or platform teams.

Oracle’s IAM challenges documentation notes that most organizations struggle with visibility into service accounts and shared credentials. The latter issue is multiplied by the fact that, as soon as AI agents enter the equation, a single AI process can create dozens of sub-identities or issue authorization on demand.

What IAM Is Actually Responsible For

To be explicit about what is owned by IAM in the NHI governance model:

• Tagging of ownership and purpose- Each NHI needs a human owner with a name and stated purpose of existence.
• Approval logic- Who may request a new service account? Who sanctions high allowances?
• Entitlement management- What may the identity do, and is that still proper?
• Certification and review- Periodic rechecks of the identity are needed; is this still required, and are the scopes correct?
• Widening the policy barrier – Privileged and non-privileged as a norm, but not an exception.

IAM answers: which identities should exist, and what should they be permitted to do?

It fails to answer: what happens when it needs higher access right now, and how can we ensure it stays safe?

That’s PAM’s job.

PAM’s Role: Secrets, Sessions, and Elevation

The Vault Layer

Privileged Access Management covers the specifics of NHI’s access to sensitive resources. The core components:

Secrets vaulting: Credentials and API keys are not stored in code or as environment variables, but are created and maintained in a secrets vault (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, CyberArk, etc.). The secret is never static in a config file; the NHI requests it at runtime.

Credential rotation – PAM systems can automatically rotate credentials on a schedule or after use. A password that changes every 24 hours on a service account is far more difficult to use than one that hasn’t changed since 2021.

Just-in-time (JIT) access – NHIs do not maintain sustained privileged access; instead, they request temporary elevation. The access expires automatically.

Session recording – You can record the exact outcome of a privileged operation: PAM can record the commands issued, the data accessed, and the changes made. This audit goal supports compliance.

As P0 Security has analyzed it on the topic of NHIs and the future of PAM, the most developed organizations are beginning to consider treating all NHIs as privileged identities by default, not only the clearly visible ones containing the word admin in the name.

How PAM and IAM Divide the Work

They are not competitors; they are complementary systems. IAM determines the guidelines; PAM implements them during access.

According to research by OASIS Security on NHI lifecycle management, this is called the governance handshake: IAM authorizes that an identity should be granted a specific degree level of access; PAM controls precisely how and when such access is granted and used. Building the End-to-End NHI Lifecycle.

My Experience With Lifecycle Gaps

I have observed that most NHI incidents I have heard about do not occur during the creation stage, but at the end of the lifecycle. Temporary credentials become permanent. Decommissioned application services linger for years. No one considers eliminating them since no one possesses them.

A correct lifecycle model will seal those gaps at every step:

Stage 1: Create

• The requester records the purpose, owning team, and predicted lifespan.
• Approx. when the IAM workflow invokes authorization of an identified owner.
• Only the minimum necessary permits are supplied to the identity.
• Enrolled in a central NHI inventory (this cannot be compromised for compliance)

Stage 2: Approve

• Poor security: IAM checks. Approval logic in IAM checks: does this identity need to exist? Is the access requested consistent with the reply?
• High permissions require second approval.
• Every approval is registered with timestamps.

Stage 3: Default to the least possible extent.

• There is no privileged status of standing – JIT processes for anything beyond baseline.
• Before day one, the PAM vault became the source of credentials.

Stage 4: Rotate and Monitor

• PAM manages automatic credential rotation.
• Behavioral monitoring identifies abnormalities such as unusual access times, unusual resource requests, and access from new locations.
• The Hoop.dev NIST framework guide links this phase to the “Detect” and “Respond” functions of NIST CSF.

Stage 5: Certify or Remove

• IAM certification campaigns every quarter (or semi-annually).
• Owner confirmation: Is this ID required? Is the scope of access still in place?
• PAM is triggered to revoke secrets and close sessions by commands from the decommissioning process.
• A stored audit trail is maintained for compliance.

This life cycle is not a theory. The concept of automated identity governance appears in NIST SP 800-207 (Zero Trust Architecture), ISO 27001 Annex A, NIS2, and the EU AI Act in one way or another. If you work in controlled settings, this lifecycle becomes your compliance process.

The AI Agent Problem and Why It Changes Everything

Agents Are NHIs on Steroids

A traditional service account verifies and does something before it logs out. An AI agent is different. It might:

• Spawn dynamic sub-agents or children.
• Make several calls to APIs consecutively.
• Decide on the resources to use depending on the situation.
• Work continuously across sessions.

Most current models of NHI governance are built around that behavioral profile. I’ve found that when teams use AI agents, they typically use them as ordinary service accounts: one set of long-lived credentials, broad access, scopes, and little monitoring. That’s a problem.

To be safe at scale, AI agents must have the following:

1. A service principal is not a shared credential: it’s a unique identity—a single identity for agents.
2. The Vault-based agent requests its credentials from PAM at runtime; secrets are never coded.
3. Temporary credentials: tokens can be used only within the task window; credentials aren’t maintained.
4. Scoped permissions – the agent only accesses the APIs and data sources that it is required to in a given workflow.
5. PAM-managed elevation – when an agent needs to perform a privileged action, it will go through a JIT request, just as a human would.

This is well put in Aembit’s analysis of NIST 2.0 and workload identities, where all zero-trust principles applied to human access also apply to workload and agent access. Check, limit access to information, and assume a violation.

SPIFFE/SPIRE: The Emerging Standard for Workload Identity

For teams developing cloud-native infrastructure, the secure identity framework SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone) and its implementation, SPIRE, are becoming the preferred standard for workload identity.

The core concept is that every workload has a cryptographically verifiable identity document called a SVID (SPIFFE Verifiable Identity Document). Workloads use short-lived certificates to identify themselves to a trusted authority, rather than fixed API keys.

NHIMG calls this an identity-native security model, where identity isn’t added as a credential in the middle of the workload.

Red Hat has a zero-trust workload identity manager in technology preview that goes further by integrating SPIFFE/SPIRE with Keylime (no attestation hardware) to not only verify who a workload is, but also its condition when requesting access.

Compliance Mapping: Where This Fits Regulatory Requirements

Security teams do not exist in a vacuum. The IAM + PAM governance stack is as follows, which would be reflected by present frameworks in the following manner:

The EU AI Act angle is worth noting in particular. As organizations can place AI agents on a customer front desk or a decision support desk, the need to demonstrate that the agent acted within the context of a controlled, audit-funded identity governance will be mandated, rather than good practice.

Practical Patterns to Start With

For Teams Just Getting Started

1. First, inventory. It is impossible to rule what you cannot see. Run a discovery exercise in your environment to identify every service account, API key, and token. NHI discovery is a specialty of tools such as Veza on cloud and SaaS platforms.
2. Store ownership – Each NHI must have a named human owner. No exceptions. If no one will own it, decommission it.
3. Vault credentials: choose a secrets management tool. Transfer the most dangerous credentials at first. Don’t try to boil the ocean.
4. Establish an expedited lifecycle procedure – A checklist-only procedure is at least a step in the right direction. Creation request – approval – quarterly – decommission trigger.

For More Mature Programs

• Introduce access using JIT to any privileged NHI operations.
• Install behavioral analytics to identify credential misuse.
• Integrate Nicandos NHI governance into your Intellectual Workflow (ServiceNow, Jira, etc.)
• Discuss SPIFFE/SPIRE for workload identity on the cloud.
• Align your NHI inventory with your AI agent implementation policy.

Trust Boosters: External Resources Worth Reading

The two sources that can be used by teams that want to dive deeper are:

1. NIST SP-800-207 (Zero Trust Architecture).
   Anchor text proposal: NIST Zero Trust Architecture workload identity guidance.
   URL: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-207.pdf
   Why it matters: The final system to implement for a zero-trust federal structure, which gives specific instructions on non-human workload authentication that can be directly related to the governance patterns presented in this chapter.
2. CNCF Cloud Native Security Whitepaper.
   Suggested anchor text: CNCF cloud native security workload identity whitepaper.
   URL: https://www.cncf.io/reports/cloud-native-security-whitepaper/
   Why it is important: Experts in the discipline cover workload identity, secrets management, and the SPIFFE/SPIRE ecosystem in practice, in detail, and in an implementation-ready way. The tool is particularly helpful for DevSecOps teams.

Where the Field Is Heading

The government issue hasn’t disappeared; it’s only grown. With each new AI agent, each new API integration, and each new cloud service, we add to the inventory of NHIs. Organizations that build the governance stack now, while volume is still manageable, will have a major upper hand.

The new scheme is as follows: IAM is a policy/ownership layer, PAM is an enforcement/secret layer, SPIFFE/SPIRE (or similar) is the identity layer in cloud-native applications, and behavioral analytics is the continuous monitoring layer. Each layer has its purpose; none tries to do everything.

For a broader perspective on AI systems causing identity problems, see the article Identity Crisis – Securing Non-Human Identities to AI Agents; this is where most contemporary thought has focused.

It is not necessarily the most highly-tooled team that wins this problem. My experience demonstrated that the largest success stems from organizations that initially do not design the process wrong, i. e., clear ownership, documented lifecycle, regular reviews, and then superimpose tooling.

Wrapping Up

A governance stack of non-human identities is not a product or problem in itself. It is an IAM-PAM coordination model where each layer belongs to someone.

IAM regulates the existence and the reason why. PAM regulates access. Together, these factors leave many organizations vulnerable to hundreds (and occasionally thousands) of unmanaged, unscrutinized, over-privileged non-human identities lurking silently in their ecosystem.

When your company is deploying AI agents, and you don’t have a clear answer to: what identity this agent is, who owns it, and how its credentials are rotated? That’s where to start. Not the highly developed equipment. And the simplest governance question: does this identity have an owner?

Define that, develop the lifecycle around that, and the rest of the stack emerges.

Pranay Sai Aduvala

I’m a technology writer passionate about AI and digital marketing. I create engaging and useful content that bridges the gap between complex technology concepts and digital technologies. My writing makes the process easy and engaging. I encourage participation I continue to research innovation and technology. Let’s connect and talk technology!