Enterprises with established Identity Access Management and Privileged Access Management must extend governance to non-human identities to protect APIs, services, automation and agentic AI. Effective evaluation of NHI security software hinges on risk-driven prioritization, integration fidelity and measurable outcomes. CIOs, CISOs and IT leaders should align the identity strategy with enterprise security posture management by assessing NHI exposure, validating functional coverage and piloting for impact. This Analyst Perspective outlines a practical, stepwise approach to select and implement NHI applications that complement IAM/PAM, operationalize Zero Trust and elevate compliance, visibility and resilience across hybrid environments.
A structured process that prioritizes understanding current risks, business needs and integration alignment is necessary to properly evaluate the addition of NHI security software in an enterprise that already has IAM deployed. The evaluation should be methodical to ensure adoption brings tangible security and operational benefits without causing disruption.
ISG Research asserts that through 2026, integration fidelity with IAM/PAM and DevOps toolchains is a gating criterion for NHI security software adoption and will drive vendor differentiation toward policy enforcement, incident response orchestration and scalable hybrid support.
Several steps are available to evaluate and prioritize the addition of NHI security software in the enterprise, including:
- Assessing the current NHI landscape and risk exposure. Start by discovering and inventorying all NHIs in the environment, including service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates and automation identities. Identify unmanaged or orphaned NHIs, risky permissions and credential exposure. This assessment uncovers gaps that traditional IAM overlooks and quantifies the risk scope.
- Defining business priorities and use cases. Determine which NHIs pose the highest security risk or compliance concern based on usage, privilege levels, environment (cloud/hybrid/on-premises) and regulatory pressure. Clarify business goals for the NHI program, such as reducing breach risk, automating credential lifecycle or enabling DevSecOps workflows.
- Evaluating technical fit and integration. Examine how well candidate NHI security applications integrate with the existing IAM platform, secret vaults, PAM, cloud environments, DevOps toolchains and logging/monitoring systems. Favor tools with robust APIs and support for hybrid cloud/hybrid infrastructure.
- Selecting software based on functional coverage. Evaluate if the tools provide essential NHI capabilities: discovery, classification, ownership assignment, lifecycle automation (rotation, decommissioning), behavioral monitoring, anomaly detection and incident response. Also check for scalability and policy enforcement features.
- Piloting and measuring impact. Conduct pilots with a focus on critical NHI groups to validate effectiveness, ease of adoption and operational impact. Measure improvements in visibility, audit coverage, risk reduction and operational efficiency.
- Defining a policy framework and governance. Establish policies for NHI lifecycle, least privilege enforcement, attestation, access review and secret management, aligned with security frameworks like Zero Trust and NIST. Assign ownership and accountability.
- Prioritizing the implementation effort. Prioritize based on risk exposure, compliance timelines, ease of remediation and business impact. Focus first on high-risk, high-value NHIs that affect critical workloads and comply with regulatory needs.
- Planning continuous monitoring and improvement. Integrate NHI security into ongoing IAM governance with automated alerting and response workflows. Ensure the program scales with organizational growth and the evolving threat landscape.
This stepwise, risk- and business-driven approach validates that the NHI security tool complements and extends existing IAM functionality, avoids duplication and addresses the growing security gaps from non-human identities effectively. Prioritization should lean toward high-risk NHIs and integration ease for faster enterprise value realization.
A disciplined evaluation program ensures NHI software advances identity strategy, integrates cleanly with IAM/PAM and delivers measurable risk reduction. By inventorying NHIs, aligning on high-value use cases, validating functional coverage and piloting for outcomes, leaders strengthen enterprise security posture management and operationalize Zero Trust for machine identities, including agentic AI. Focus initial rollout on high-risk NHIs and governance policies that scale across hybrid environments. The result is unified oversight of human and non-human identities, improved compliance and resilient automation that accelerates secure digital execution.
Regards,
Jeff Orr