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The Silent Majority: Security Risks of Non-Human Identities in Cloud-Native Applications

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  • Pooja Rawat
  • Soumen Chakraborty

Abstract

Cloud-native applications rely on large numbers of credential-bearing software actors, including service accounts, API keys, OAuth clients, pipeline tokens, workload identities and machine certificates. These non-human identities (NHIs) are numerous, frequently over-privileged, often without a named owner, and commonly secured by long-lived secrets that cannot use human-oriented controls such as multi-factor authentication. This paper presents a taxonomy of NHI types and their characteristic risks, and proposes the Discover, Own, Minimize, Replace and Monitor (DOMRM) lifecycle governance model. A four-level maturity model and a set of metrics, such as ownership rate, credential age and ephemeral share, are offered so that organizations can measure progress. A longitudinal evaluation design is outlined. The contribution is conceptual and aims to give practitioners a practical sequence for bringing non-human identities under the same discipline applied to human users.

Suggested Citation

  • Pooja Rawat & Soumen Chakraborty, 2026. "The Silent Majority: Security Risks of Non-Human Identities in Cloud-Native Applications," International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology, International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology, vol. 12(5), pages 494-499, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:jbh:ijsrcs:v12:y2026:i5:id:2194
    DOI: 10.32628/CSEIT2612570
    Note: Article URL: https://ijsrcseit.com/home/article/view/CSEIT2612570
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