Non-human identities, or NHIs (essential for automated operations and security), are outpacing human identities. Gartner reports 10 to 45 times more NHIs than human users within organizations.
This growth creates an often-overlooked attack surface. Unlike human identities, NHIs operate autonomously. This makes it difficult to detect anomalies or breaches. Without proper monitoring, compromised NHIs can silently propagate through systems and cause damage before discovery.
NHIs are the digital, automated and programmable access credentials that play a crucial role in securing systems, managing access and ensuring the integrity of digital environments while also helping automate tasks and increase business efficiencies. They typically come in the form of API keys, OAuth tokens, service accounts and secrets.
NHIs ensure seamless operations within modern organizations, and their significance has only been magnified with each technological leap — cloud computing, DevOps, robotic process automation, IoT and next-gen AI advancements. But when compromised they can silently springboard an adversary into the heart of a company's most sensitive operations.
For example, Cloudflare’s security incident last fall was a result of attackers using the access afforded by access tokens and service account credentials to infiltrate its systems.
To prevent incidents like that from happening, Rezonate recently revealed unified coverage for both human to non-human identity security with comprehensive capabilities; identity inventory and visibility, security posture, compliance and identity threat detection and response.
Rezonate is committed to helping organizations defend against attackers while making it easier to proactively protect user identities. Rezonate offers a combination of visibility, monitoring, posture, threat detection and response and compliance reporting for non-human and human identities whereas most other vendors only focus on NHI governance, administration and lifecycle management.
With discovery, inventory and visibility into NHIs and associated users simultaneously on the same platform, Rezonate provides risk-driven, contextual insights enabling informed, proactive or even real-time decisions to be made. This ensures that security, identity and DevOps teams are better equipped to work together and prevent modern threats like supply chain attacks.
In relation to managing and securing NHIs across cloud environments, the platform provides better visibility into NHIs, their permissions and behaviors. This allows organizations to understand their complete attack surface. By assessing NHIs and their associated risks, Rezonate also allows security and DevOps teams to implement effective controls to prevent over-privileged access and minimizing vulnerabilities.
Furthermore, the platform's continuous monitoring capabilities detect anomalous NHI activity for swift responses to potential threats with the goal of preventing breaches.
“During my experience in national cyber security operations and cybersecurity, I saw first-hand how defenders divide their world by adding different tools to solve the same problems. Attackers see this disparate complexity as a welcome challenge,” said Roy Akerman, CEO and co-founder of Rezonate. “Securing NHIs and human identities separately increases friction, creates blindspots and slows down the defenders. That's why we set out to address this rapidly growing challenge with a unified approach.”
Rezonate's platform is crucial given the increasing complexity and risks associated with NHIs, as pointed out by Gartner. Rezonate will transfrom NHIs from a potential liability into a manageable and secure asset. The platform's ability to understand NHIs' roles, permissions and behaviors will be huge in preventing data breaches.
Edited by
Alex Passett
