Firms across the world are facing one of the most profound changes in history to their digital environments. Emerging non-human identities As non-human identities quickly circulate in disparate corporate infrastructures, they accumulate records, credits and histories as things become entangled. This extends to IoT devices, service accounts, and robotic process automation tools. This unprecedented increase presents some essential challenges of security and management, which will ultimately determine the future of identity governance.
The incredibly fast technology adoption cycle that IoT devices have created has been a huge driver of this phenomenon. As firms adopt and become dependent on these smart technologies, they create many new non-human identities along the way. In short, these new identities require vigilant oversight and invocation. These devices, including sensors and connected equipment, create terabytes of data daily. Additionally, to authentically operate within these network systems, they need unique identifiers.
The Impact of IoT Devices
The rise of IoT technology reshaped the way organizations operate. Today’s enterprises run on vast systems of interconnected devices and sensors that deliver unprecedented productivity and efficiency. This reliance comes with challenges. Every IoT device functions as its own, non-human identity that needs to be provisioned with its own credentials and methods of interaction.
As these devices continue to multiply, organizations are experiencing an exponential growth of non-human identities. This increase makes identity management all the more problematic. Traditional security measures are ill-equipped to address the challenges presented by these devices. Organizations are faced with a new challenge of reimagining how to protect and manage these dynamic new entities to reduce the risk of exploitable weaknesses.
Service Accounts and Their Role
IoT devices are central in expanding the nonhuman identities. Service accounts turned out to be the sleeper account that contributed heavily to this increase as well. These accounts which allow for automated processes, customized workflows, and improved communication between systems have become critical infrastructure for many organizations.
As enterprises implement increasingly complex IT environments, companies are provisioning hundreds of service accounts to facilitate different functions. Each of these accounts functions separately and needs their own security measures on top of that. As a result, organizations are now tasked with governing an ever-growing ecosystem of non-human identities, all adding more complexity to their identity governance initiatives.
This consistent and rapid increase in the quantity of service accounts goes hand-in-hand with an explosion of non-human identities through our organizational infrastructural landscapes. This unfortunate trend highlights how critical it is that we have strong, comprehensive policies. These policies must address the specific characteristics and security needs of these accounts.
Robotic Process Automation’s Contribution
Robotic process automation has been equally instrumental in multiplying non-human actors across infrastructures. RPA tools make it faster and easier to automate any repetitive task, improving operational efficiency and leaving human employees with more time to devote to more strategic initiatives. The deployment of RPA comes with some challenges.
Each RPA instance operates as a unique non-human persona, which needs to be carefully considered and governed. As organizations deploy more RPA solutions, they face an unprecedented surge in non-human identities. Being smart, global or innovative isn’t enough—they’re all contingent on effective governance to truly thrive and function. This spike makes efforts to comply with new regulations more complicated and creates worries about increased security dangers from untracked automated processes.
Managing the Explosion of Non-Human Identities
As the proliferation of non-human identities shows no sign of slowing, managing this complexity is a challenge that demands impressive organizational strategies. A holistic approach to identity governance frameworks is needed, so that human and non-human identities are both proactively monitored.
Organizations should adopt sophisticated identity management solutions that grant comprehensive visibility into the distinct needs, patterns, and behaviors of non-human identities. By employing analytics and machine learning technologies, businesses can better understand the interactions between these entities and detect anomalies that may indicate security breaches.
