Today, Silverfort expands its deep identity protection to the cloud—bringing unmatched visibility and control to non-human identities (NHIs) across cloud providers, infrastructure, and SaaS apps, just as we’ve long done for on-prem service accounts.
There is an explosion happening in the identity landscape, and most organizations are blind to: the growth and sprawl of non-human identities (NHIs)—service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates, and more. What began as a small set of service accounts and machine identities has now expanded into a complex, interwoven ecosystem. These identities are essential for automating processes, securing systems, and enabling modern digital workflows, but they’re also the source of significant security exposures.
The human-to-NHI ratio, already estimated around 1:50, continues to grow. This massive scale creates an ever-expanding attack surface for every organization where these machine accounts can be compromised and provide malicious actors entry points into an organization’s environment to move laterally. As organizations increasingly embrace multi-cloud environments, SaaS, and AI-driven automation, NHIs are no longer just the technical components—they’ve become the connective tissue of modern organizations. They orchestrate and secure critical workflows across AI agents, SaaS platforms, homegrown applications, and cloud infrastructure. This dynamic web of machine-led interactions is what drives innovation and creates tangible business value. Non-human identities frequently access core data—intellectual property, customer information, financial systems—and operate at the core of business-critical infrastructure. They don’t just support growth; they drive it.
The Problem: The Explosion of NHIs and the Security Crisis It Creates
The challenges of securing NHIs are immense. They span cloud and on-prem environments, managed by multiple teams: IT, DevOps, Engineering, and Security. These teams don’t always speak the same language when it comes to identity security, and more importantly, they lack the visibility to track and manage these identities across the ecosystem. NHIs are created by one team but modified and used by others, making ownership tracking nearly impossible.
These identities don’t operate in silos—they are interconnected across platforms and applications with complex workflows. This is increasingly more challenging in cloud-forward environments with cloud NHIs. For example, a GitHub identity may trigger access to AWS, Azure, and other cloud environments, amplifying both the complexity and risk of the NHI ecosystem. The lack of visibility into these diverse and dynamic identities makes it nearly impossible to understand the full scope of risk.
NHI risk begins from the point of creation and configuration. They span a variety of naming conventions, credential types, lifecycle states, and control planes—often with no standardized governance. Some are mistakenly configured with human credentials, while others are created directly in code or left unmanaged by DevOps pipelines, proof of concepts, and more.
From a lifecycle standpoint, NHIs have been treated as “set and forget” assets. Many were provisioned once and never touched again, despite being reused, repurposed, or misconfigured over time. This “messy middle” of the NHI lifecycle is generating additional risk for organizations.
Traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) security tools like Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) are inadequate to solve the security challenges that NHIs present. PAM is designed to manage human identities, and is not equipped to secure the dynamic, ephemeral nature of machine identities. Traditional MFA wasn’t designed for non-human identities, which can’t authenticate like humans because they’re automated systems and services. These legacy approaches to identity security cannot keep pace with the speed and complexity of today’s dynamic attack surface.
Further, we’ve seen a rise in niche startups that address only NHIs, or even just a specific part of the NHI problem—whether it’s discovery, management, or governance. While these point solutions may seem appealing, they fail to address the full picture across human to non-human access for cloud to on-prem resources. Attackers will inevitably exploit the gaps between these solutions, leaving organizations vulnerable to compromise.
Non-human identities have already become a top attack vector. We’ve seen modern breaches originate from compromised tokens, service accounts, and unattended machine credentials — often bypassing traditional security controls entirely. Without visibility into their privilege levels and access patterns, these identities remain blind spots attackers exploit with ease.
The Solution: Silverfort’s NHI Security, Unified Coverage for Every Type of Identity, Everywhere
At Silverfort, we see this problem clearly. With the acquisition of Rezonate, we have built an NHI security solution to tackle the growing complexity of NHIs head-on. The very innovations that earned Rezonate the honor of being named one of “Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Identity-First Security” are now available in Silverfort’s NHI Security product.
Today, we are introducing a unified NHI security offering that integrates identity security for both on-prem Active Directory service accounts and cloud NHIs. Silverfort’s NHI Security provides complete visibility, ownership mapping, and enables proactive protection for non-human identities across hybrid environments. It identifies behavior patterns, enforces access controls for on-premises service accounts to prevent anyone from using them outside of their intended purpose, and delivers actionable insights for cloud NHIs.
This is the product the industry needs—one that covers everything from discovery and visibility to proactive protection and risk-driven decision-making. One that addresses NHIs within the broader identity security context and protects both human and non-human identities in a unified manner. No more fragmented, siloed solutions. No more gaps for attackers to exploit.
What We’re Announcing: Expanding Coverage to Cloud NHIs
Today, we are expanding our platform to provide comprehensive coverage for cloud-based NHIs across all major cloud identity providers, cloud infrastructure providers, and SaaS applications. For years, Silverfort has been the leader in securing on-prem Microsoft Active Directory (AD) service accounts, providing unparalleled visibility and protection to many of the world’s leading enterprises. Now, we bring that same level of depth to cloud NHIs, connecting the dots between human identities and their non-human counterparts, giving organizations the comprehensive visibility needed to make informed, proactive security decisions.
Addressing the Challenges: Why Silverfort’s Solution Is the Future of NHI Security
- Unified coverage for both on-prem and cloud NHIs: Most vendors treat on-prem and cloud NHIs as separate problems. We don’t. Our platform integrates both, providing a unified security posture that extends from cloud to ground. No more silos, no more fragmentation. Whether it’s a service account on AD or an API key in AWS, we take care of their security seamlessly.
- Complete discovery and ownership mapping: We understand the critical need for visibility into both NHIs and their owners. Traditional tools leave ownership tracking to guesswork, making it impossible to secure these identities effectively. At Silverfort, we map every identity—human and non-human—to its owner, providing the visibility needed to protect them. You cannot separate NHIs from human identities—they are created, maintained, and operated by people, and their actions directly affect human-managed systems and vice versa.
- Real-time protection of service accounts: We go far deeper in visibility and protection than any other vendor when it comes to the on-prem AD service accounts. Real-time enforcement of virtual fencing blocks any use of the account outside of its intended purpose, making lateral movement impossible. Our Smart Policy capability simplifies enforcement at scale across large, complex environments with a single click.
- Seamless integration across platforms: Our platform is built to integrate with existing infrastructures, whether on-prem or in the cloud. From AD to Entra ID, from AWS to Azure, from GitHub to Snowflake, we provide cross-platform protection that spans hybrid environments, ensuring that no identity is left unprotected.
The Future of Identity Security: Transformation and Innovation
At Silverfort, we’re not just responding to the latest trends; we’re shaping the future of identity security. We’re building an end-to-end platform that protects every type of identity, no matter where they originate or if they are human or not, offering unparalleled visibility, analysis and control across your entire ecosystem. As identity becomes the focal point in the security stack, our platform will continuously evolve to meet the demands of the market. We will continue to innovate, bringing new capabilities like behavioral monitoring, threat modeling, and event filtering to ensure that identities—whether human or machine—remain protected.
In a world where identity is the new perimeter, machine and human identities are inseparable. Silverfort is leading the way in securing this interconnected reality—making sure every identity in your ecosystem is visible, understood, and protected.
Join us in reshaping the future of identity security. Learn more about Silverfort’s NHI security product here.