Critical Future Of Cybersecurity Includes Non-human Employees (2026)

Non-human employees are becoming the future of cybersecurity, and enterprises need to prepare accordingly. As organizations scale Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud automation, there is exponential growth in Non-Human Identities (NHIs), including bots, AI agents, service accounts and automation scripts. In fact, 51% of respondents in ConductorOne's 2025 Future of Identity Security Report said the security of NHIs is now just as important as that of human accounts. Yet, despite their presence in modern organizations, NHIs often operate outside the scope of traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems.

This growing dependence on non-human users creates new attack surfaces that organizations must urgently prepare for. Without full visibility and proper oversight, NHIs may have over-permissioned standing access and static credentials, making them valuable targets for cybercriminals. To secure NHIs with the same precision as human identities, organizations must develop modern security strategies that incorporate zero-trust security, least-privilege access, automated credential rotation and secrets management. By modernizing their strategies, organizations can work to reduce security risks and prevent privileged account compromise, regardless of whether a user is human.

Unlike human users, NHIs and their activity typically go unnoticed, even though they hold powerful access to sensitive systems. NHIs are frequently granted broad, standing access across infrastructure, cloud environments and CI/CD pipelines. Once provisioned, NHI access is rarely reviewed or revoked, making it a prime target for cybercriminals. The main security risks associated with NHIs include credentials hardcoded into scripts, secrets embedded in source code and a lack of visibility into how NHIs are used. Often, there is little to no logging or monitoring of NHIs, leaving compromised machine credentials vulnerable to exploitation, allowing cybercriminals to go undetected for weeks or even months. In cloud environments, non-human users significantly outnumber human users, expanding attack surfaces and introducing many more security vulnerabilities. When NHIs are overlooked in security audits or excluded from traditional IAM policies, security teams risk allowing the convenience of automation to turn into a major blind spot.

To reduce NHI-related security risks, organizations must enforce zero-trust security for every identity by treating bots, AI agents, and service accoun

Source: The Hacker News