Nonhuman Identities (NHIs)—service accounts, API keys, machine identities, etc.—are one of the most exploited attack vectors in cybersecurity. Like human identities, NHIs have roles, permissions, and credentials (i.e. secrets) that organizations must manage. However, unlike human identities, NHIs are increasing exponentially. NHIs outnumber human identities by over 20X with storage and management dispersed across vaults, cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, and third-party integrations. Organizations struggle to inventory and manage NHIs at scale and address the root cause of risk: secret exposure.

As part of its Complete ASPM platform, Cycode empowers you to fix the NHI risks that matter by inventorying NHIs, leveraging the best-in-class Secrets Engine to identify exposed secrets, and mapping NHIs to risk factors and owners for faster prioritization and remediation.

The Critical Role of Secrets Detection in NHI Security

Securing NHIs is a multifaceted challenge. Risks include excessive permissions, weak authentication, and improper lifecycle management. However, the core NHI risk is secret exposure. Secrets such as API keys, tokens, and IAM roles grant NHIs access to data and critical systems. Exposed secrets provide attackers with a direct avenue for unauthorized access, lateral movement, and privilege escalation.

NHI secret exposure is particularly challenging because it is difficult to detect and remediate at scale. Secrets are inadvertently embedded in source code, configuration files, logs, and CI/CD workflows. They are also exposed through messaging and collaboration tools across the SDLC ecosystem. Furthermore, correlating exposed secrets with NHI permissions, data access, owners, and active status is a dynamic challenge. Without visibility into where NHIs exist, how they interact, and whether their credentials are exposed and active, organizations struggle to detect and mitigate NHI risks.

To effectively secure NHIs, organizations need a comprehensive approach built on a leading Secrets Engine. This requires augmenting secrets detection with an accurate NHI inventory that unifies visibility into NHI posture management, access permissions, and exposure paths. A robust security solution must correlate secrets with NHIs, assess their risk in real time, and accelerate remediation before attackers can take advantage. By integrating NHI security into a core secrets detection solution, organizations can proactively reduce their attack surface and ensure the integrity of machine identities.

Introducing Nonhuman Identity (NHI) Security as Part of Cycode’s Complete ASPM

Cycode’s NHI security solution enables customers to identify, prioritize, and fix NHI risks that matter, faster. Cycode delivers clarity into what NHIs are exposed, who owns the NHI, the risks associated with the exposure, and how to streamline remediation. The solution empowers customers to:

• Create an inventory of NHIs with deep context into relevant factors like active status, data access, permissions, owners, and secret values
• Correlate NHI secret values with Cycode’s Secrets Engine to determine which NHIs are exposed and provide visibility into the exposure path to identify the most critical risks
• Automate remediation workflows to notify owners, generate tickets, and trigger actions that reduce exposure windows

Inventory NHIs across Your Enterprise

Cycode’s NHI inventory unifies the visibility and management of NHIs stored across various vaults, cloud service providers, and pipelines. The inventory provides immediate visibility into the composition of your NHI portfolio and the state of NHIs – including active NHIs with exposed secrets.

Classify NHIs with Deep Insight into NHI Exposure Paths and Ownership

Unique asset cards for each NHI type provide deep context into resource access and permissions to understand how NHIs connect with sensitive data and critical operations. You can also see users who created or are associated with the NHI to identify owners.

Correlate NHIs with Exposed Secrets

Secret exposure is a critical risk factor for NHI security. Cycode’s industry-leading Secrets Engine continuously scans, detects, and remediates exposed secrets across your

SDLC and developer productivity tools. We correlate findings from our secrets engine with NHI secret values to highlight exposure and empower teams to focus on their most critical risks.

Prioritize NHI Exposure Based on Risk

Cycode’s Risk Intelligence Graph (RIG) lets you distill security data into the risks that matter. For example, you can discover which NHIs in your organization are exposed and active or have an open violation.

Automate Remediation Workflows

Security teams can leverage RIG queries to create policies and workflows to automate prioritization, notifications, ticketing, and other remediation workflows. For example, when a secret is exposed that correlates with an active NHI, Cycode can automatically send notifications and generate tickets for remediation to minimize the exposure window.

Secure NHIs and Improve Business Outcomes with Cycode’s Complete ASPM

Cloud adoption, microservice architectures, AI development, and more will continue to drive the proliferation of NHIs. The struggle to manage and secure NHIs at scale will make them an increasingly attractive target for attackers with secret exposure as the most critical risk factor. By further expanding its Complete ASPM to correlate exposed secrets with a unified NHI inventory, Cycode empowers customers to improve their risk posture and business outcomes. Benefits include:

• Reduce Risk: Shorten exposure windows for your riskiest NHI exposures. Cycode continuously scans for exposed secrets and correlates them with the NHI inventory including deep context into NHI resource access, permissions, and ownership.
• Improve Security and Developer Experience: Extend visibility into NHI inventories and posture and leverage automation to streamline triaging, notification, ticketing, and remediation processes.
• Lower Costs with Cycode’s Complete ASPM: NHI security further extends the power and value of Cycode’s Complete ASPM platform to identify, prioritize, and fix what matters across the application lifecycle and SDLC ecosystem.

Start Securing your NHIs with Cycode today. Get a demo to learn more.