Human identity management has become a well-understood discipline, supported by a robust set of tools and best practices. However, when it comes to non-human identities—also known as machine identities—many organizations still operate with a significant blind spot. These machine identities, including service accounts, API keys, bots, and workload credentials, now outnumber human users by up to 100:1, creating an enormous security gap that attackers are eager to exploit.
Why Are Machine Identities a Growing Threat in 2025?
While traditional user identities benefit from mature governance frameworks, machine identities have become the Achilles’ heel of many security architectures. As organizations accelerate cloud adoption, integrate AI-powered agents, and automate infrastructure, the proliferation of machine identities has skyrocketed. Yet, without proper oversight, these digital assets become prime targets for attackers.
Many companies face the challenge of orphaned credentials, over-privileged service accounts, and “zombie” secrets—old credentials that remain active long after they should have been decommissioned. These issues are compounded by the fact that secrets and API keys are scattered across repositories, CI/CD pipelines, cloud environments, and even ticketing systems—often outside the scope of traditional security controls.
Secrets Sprawl: The Hidden Attack Surface
Research from GitGuardian reveals a startling trend: 70% of valid secrets detected in public repositories in 2022 remained active into 2025. This three-year window of vulnerability illustrates how secrets leak, persist, and become a ticking time bomb for breaches. High-profile incidents involving the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Toyota, and The New York Times all originated from unmanaged or leaked machine credentials.
The problem isn’t only about volume; it’s about visibility. Secrets are hidden in code, automation scripts, cloud configurations, and messaging systems—places that traditional security solutions rarely monitor or control. As a result, secret leakage has become the #2 risk in OWASP’s latest Non-Human Identity Risks report for 2025, implicated in over 80% of security breaches.
Why Secrets Managers Alone Are Not Enough
While secrets management solutions like HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk, AWS Secrets Manager, and Azure Key Vault are vital, they are not a comprehensive solution for NHI security. These tools primarily focus on secure storage and rotation, but they do not address the full lifecycle of machine identities, especially the discovery and continuous monitoring of secrets outside the vault.
In fact, GitGuardian’s analysis shows that organizations using secrets managers are more prone to secrets leakage—by a small margin—because they often handle highly sensitive or poorly managed credentials. This indicates that secrets management must be part of a broader, unified identity and access management (IAM) strategy to be truly effective.
The Platform That Fills the NHI Security Gap
To combat the rising tide of unmanaged machine identities, organizations need solutions that provide comprehensive discovery, visibility, and automated governance. GitGuardian’s NHI Security Platform is designed exactly for this purpose, delivering the capabilities necessary to close the security gaps around machine identities.
1. Discovery and Inventory: Finding the Invisible
Manual discovery is no longer feasible given how secrets are spread across multiple environments. Automated discovery continuously scans repositories, cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, and messaging platforms, creating a real-time inventory enriched with contextual metadata. This centralized view is the foundation for effective governance.
2. Onboarding and Secure Provisioning: From Day One
Standardized workflows that enforce least privilege access and integrate with secrets management tools are essential. The platform ensures consistent provisioning processes that minimize misconfigurations and over-privileged access, thereby reducing attack surfaces from the outset.
3. Continuous Monitoring: Vigilance Is Key
With secrets scattered across multiple systems, maintaining oversight is complex. The platform aggregates and normalizes data from various sources, providing centralized visibility, anomaly detection, and rapid response capabilities—crucial for identifying high-risk secrets before they are exploited.
4. Rotation and Remediation: Keeping Secrets Fresh
Regular rotation of credentials is critical, yet managing this at scale remains challenging. The platform streamlines rotation workflows, provides contextual insights, and automates remediation, significantly reducing the risk of credential-related breaches.
5. Decommissioning and Zombie Credential Elimination
Unused or stale credentials—often called “zombie secrets”—are a prime target for attackers. The platform continuously scans for such credentials and helps automate decommissioning, closing security gaps and ensuring a clean, secure environment.
Compliance and Zero Trust: Meeting Modern Security Mandates
Regulatory frameworks like PCI DSS 4.0 and NIST increasingly demand rigorous controls over machine identities, including least privilege, continuous monitoring, and secure onboarding. GitGuardian’s NHI platform is designed with these requirements in mind, helping organizations stay compliant while reducing the risk of breaches caused by mismanaged secrets.
