Emerging · Non-Human Identity

Non-Human & AI Agent Identity — The fastest-growing identity risk

Service accounts, machine tokens, and agentic AI systems now outnumber human users in most enterprise environments. Governing them with the same rigor as people is the next frontier of Zero Trust.

CISA ZTMM Pillar:Identity — extends Zero Trust controls to non-human principals: service accounts, workloads, APIs, and AI agentsView full CISA mapping

Key use cases

What this solves

🤖

Agentic AI authorization & access governance

As AI agents take autonomous actions on behalf of users — browsing, coding, executing workflows — their access must be scoped, audited, and revocable in real time.

  • OAuth 2.0 client credentials for AI agent authentication
  • Fine-grained scopes limiting what each agent can access
  • Token lifetime controls and automatic expiry
  • Audit trails for every agent action via Okta System Log
⚙️

Service account lifecycle management

Legacy service accounts with static, never-expiring passwords are one of the most exploited vectors in enterprise breaches. Eliminate them.

  • Automated service account discovery and inventory
  • Secrets rotation on a defined schedule
  • Okta Privileged Access for vault-based credential issuance
  • Just-in-time (JIT) privilege elevation for service tasks
🏗️

Workload & machine-to-machine (M2M) identity

Containerized workloads, CI/CD pipelines, and microservices need identity too. Issue short-lived tokens — never static credentials.

  • OAuth 2.0 client credentials for M2M token issuance
  • Kubernetes workload identity integration
  • GitHub Actions OIDC token federation
  • Short-lived token issuance (15-min TTL best practice)
🔍

Non-human identity discovery & posture

You can't secure what you can't see. Surface all service accounts, API keys, and tokens across your environment — then enforce policy.

  • Cross-environment NHI inventory (cloud, on-prem, SaaS)
  • Risk scoring for stale, over-privileged accounts
  • Policy-based alerts for anomalous machine behavior
  • Integration with Okta's SIEM and SOAR connectors

Ready to map your roadmap?

Take the free Zero Trust assessment or book a 30-minute session to review your identity security posture.