"Traditional IAM and IGA systems are designed primarily for human users and depend on manual onboarding and integration for each application - connectors, schema mapping, entitlement catalogs, and role modeling. Many applications never make it that far. Meanwhile, non-human identities (NHIs): service accounts, bots, APIs, and agent-AI processes are natively ungoverned, operating outside standard IAM frameworks and often without ownership, visibility, or lifecycle controls."
"Integration Bottlenecks: Every app requires a unique configuration before IAM can manage it. Unmanaged and local systems are rarely prioritized. Partial Visibility: IAM tools see only the "managed" slice of identity - leaving behind local admin accounts, service identities, and legacy systems. Complex Ownership: Turnover, mergers, and distributed teams make it unclear who owns which application or account. AI-Agents and Automation: Agent-AI introduces a new category of semi-autonomous identities that act independently from their human operators, further breaking the IAM model."
Accounts for departed employees, contractors, services, and systems often remain active across applications, platforms, assets, and cloud consoles, creating orphan accounts. Fragmented IAM/IGA tooling and manual onboarding leave many applications unmanaged. Non-human identities—service accounts, bots, APIs, and agent-AI processes—frequently operate outside governance without ownership, visibility, or lifecycle controls. Integration bottlenecks, partial visibility, unclear ownership from turnover and mergers, and autonomous AI agents exacerbate the problem. Orphan accounts commonly hold valid credentials and elevated privileges, providing attackers with entry points, as exemplified by incidents where outdated VPN or service accounts were exploited.
Read at The Hacker News
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