WHAT WE DO

Bring non-human identities under control

Managing service accounts, secrets, machine identities and AI agents. Gain visibility, ownership and control over the identities operating across your cloud, applications and infrastructure.

Identity map
In short

Non-human identities (NHIs), including service accounts, API keys and secrets, certificates, cloud workloads, RPA bots, and AI agents, routinely hold elevated, long-lived privileges that no one reviews, and often sit outside traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) tooling. Intragen helps organisations govern them by bringing Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) into a single model: Discover, Assess, Control, Govern.

You may need a more structured approach if

  • You cannot produce a reliable inventory of service accounts, secrets, or machine identities
  • Ownership and business purpose are unclear
  • Credentials remain active after applications or projects end
  • IGA and PAM teams manage the same risks through disconnected processes
  • AI agents are gaining access faster than governance controls can keep up
  • Audit evidence relies on manual investigation

On this page

What Are Non-Human Identities?

Non-human identities (NHIs) are digital identities used by applications, services, workloads, and automation to authenticate and access systems without a human directly involved.

They exist across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments, and typically sit outside the reach of traditional IAM tooling. Common types include:

TypeWhat it is
Service accountsUsed by applications and background processes to access systems and data
API keys and secretsCredentials that let one system or service call another
CertificatesUsed to authenticate machines, workloads, and encrypted connections
Containers and cloud workloadsEphemeral compute that authenticates to other services as it spins up and down
RPA botsAutomation that logs into systems and performs tasks on a schedule
AI agentsAn increasingly important category of non-human identity, acting autonomously on behalf of users or systems

AI agents introduce autonomy, so authorisation and entitlement quality become increasingly important. Through our partnership with Clutch Security, organisations can discover non-human identities, AI agents, and secrets across their environment, understand what they connect to, and identify areas requiring further investigation or remediation.

Where NHI Governance Usually Breaks Down

NHIs often carry elevated privileges and long lifespans with no one routinely checking whether they still need that access, which is what makes them a prime target for attackers.

These challenges commonly appear together:

  • No reliable inventory: you cannot say what exists
  • No clear owner: nobody is accountable for the identity
  • No lifecycle: old identities and credentials remain active
  • Inconsistent controls: different identity types are governed differently
  • Poor observability: activity exists without sufficient context

How Intragen Helps You Govern Machine Identities

Intragen helps organisations establish a joined-up model for governing non-human identities.

Depending on your current maturity, this may involve improving discovery, defining ownership and review processes, integrating existing IGA and PAM controls, or introducing new capabilities where gaps exist.

Integrated visibility and control

Where IGA and PAM already exist, we connect them rather than run them as separate disciplines, bringing governance, privileged access, and credential lifecycle controls together for non-human identities. By aligning system catalogues, asset inventories, and metadata tagging between Identity Governance and Privileged Access Management platforms, we create a centralised, logical architectural view of ownership, provisioning, and credential control across the enterprise.

Where they do not, we start with what gives you the most ground fastest, which is usually discovery and ownership.

Where to start

The free Agentic Identity Readiness Assessment establishes what you are running, who owns it, and what your current identity setup already covers, including the API keys, tokens and machine credentials behind your agents. Short, structured, and no product pitch.

Book your free assessment Talk to an identity specialist

Choose the assessment if AI agents are the pressing question. Talk to a specialist if your challenge is broader service accounts, secrets, or NHI governance.

How Our Four-Stage Approach Works

Non-human identities are governed through four stages, Discover, Assess, Control, and Govern, designed to improve visibility, control, and governance across the estate.

  1. Discover. Find and inventory NHIs, secrets and AI agents.
  2. Assess. Understand ownership, privilege, business criticality and risk.
  3. Control. Apply appropriate access, credential and lifecycle controls.
  4. Govern. Maintain ownership, review, rotation and evidence over time.

Engagements are scoped to where you are, and usually combine advisory work, assessment, and implementation rather than a single fixed deliverable. This work is delivered through Advisory and Consulting, Implementation and Integration, and Managed Services. If you would rather start with a structured assessment, the IAM Maturity Assessment covers your wider identity posture, and the Agentic Identity Readiness Assessment covers AI agents specifically.

What Effective NHI Governance Requires

Effective non-human identity governance rests on three things: a lifecycle, controls proportionate to risk, and protected credentials.

  • Lifecycle governanceGovern NHIs from creation to retirement.
  • Risk-based controlsApply controls according to privilege, sensitivity and business impact.
  • Credential protectionVault, rotate and monitor credentials and secrets where appropriate.

We work with platforms including the Idira Identity Security Platform from Palo Alto Networks, built on CyberArk’s privileged access heritage, and One Identity. For more on what that change means, read CyberArk, Idira and the Future of Privileged Access.

Compliance and Audit Readiness

Organisations increasingly need to demonstrate visibility, ownership and control over machine identities as part of security, audit and compliance activity.

With IGA and PAM working together, you can evidence a more mature governance posture, supported by detailed audit trails, ownership tagging, and risk metrics.

These controls can support broader security, accountability and access-governance obligations associated with ISO 27001, NIS2 and GDPR.

The Outcomes of Effective NHI Governance

Applying a consistent risk-based model across your identity estate produces measurable improvements in governance and operational security.

With Intragen’s integrated IGA and PAM approach, you can:

  • Simplify identity lifecycle management for all non-human users.
  • Strengthen audit readiness and compliance posture.
  • Reduce credential misuse and security exposure.
  • Gain unified visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Identity Expertise and Partnerships

We combine specialist identity expertise with partnerships across leading identity security technologies.

  • One Identity Platinum Premier+ Partner
    One of only three partners to hold this status.
  • Okta Apex Partner
    Okta’s highest partner tier.
  • Clutch Security partner
    Supporting discovery of non-human identities, AI agents and secrets.
  • Palo Alto Networks
    For privileged access and high-risk identity controls.
  • Delivery across five regions
    UK and Ireland, Nordics, Benelux, DACH, and Greece.

Frequently asked questions

What is a non-human identity?

A non-human identity is a digital identity used by an application, service, workload, or piece of automation to authenticate and access systems without a human directly involved. Service accounts, API keys, certificates, containers, RPA bots, and AI agents are all non-human identities.

What are examples of non-human identities?

Service accounts used by applications and background processes; API keys and secrets that let one service call another; certificates authenticating machines and encrypted connections; containers and cloud workloads; RPA bots running scheduled tasks; and AI agents acting autonomously on behalf of users or systems.

Are AI agents non-human identities?

Yes. AI agents are an increasingly important category of non-human identity. What distinguishes them is autonomy: a service account does what it was configured to do, while an agent acts on its own judgement within the permissions it holds. That makes the accuracy of your authorisation data the limit on its blast radius.

Why are non-human identities a security risk?

Non-human identities frequently hold elevated privileges for long periods with no one reviewing whether that access is still needed. The typical results are orphaned credentials left active after projects end, privilege sprawl across cloud and on-premise systems, compliance exposure from missing ownership, and operational failure when automated identities expire unexpectedly.

How do you discover non-human identities?

Discovery is the first of Intragen’s four stages. We build an inventory of non-human identities across cloud and on-premise systems, including Active Directory, LDAP, and cloud IAM platforms, then categorise and tag each identity by type, system, and environment. Our partnership with Clutch Security extends discovery to AI agents and secrets across cloud, SaaS, and DevOps environments.

How do IGA and PAM work together to govern NHIs?

Identity Governance and Administration answers who or what should have access and provides the evidence for audit; Privileged Access Management controls and protects the credentials themselves. Intragen aligns system catalogues, asset inventories, and metadata tagging across both, producing a single view of ownership, provisioning, and credential control rather than two disconnected toolsets.

How can NHI governance support audit and compliance?

Organisations increasingly need to demonstrate visibility, ownership and control over machine identities as part of security, audit and compliance activity. Governing non-human identities produces the audit trails, ownership records, and risk metrics that can provide evidence of effective control, and can support broader obligations associated with ISO 27001, NIS2 and GDPR.

Ready to Secure Every Identity?

Unmanaged service accounts and automation identities are a growing blind spot in enterprise security.

By bringing IGA’s governance strengths together with PAM’s control capabilities, Intragen helps you operationalise a scalable, risk-based model for managing machine identities, built for the realities of modern hybrid IT. There are two ways to start, depending on where your pressure is.

Start here

Agentic Identity Readiness Assessment

A free, short, structured assessment covering agent ownership, visibility and governance, including the API keys, tokens and machine credentials behind them. You leave with a scored picture, a sequenced plan, and an honest map of what to fix first. No product pitch.

Book your free assessment
Broader NHI challenge

Talk to an identity specialist

If your problem is service accounts, secrets, or NHI governance more widely rather than agentic AI, start with a conversation. We will discuss your current NHI landscape, identify the most pressing visibility and control gaps, and recommend a practical starting point.

Contact our experts