As we approach 2025, one of the most pressing trends in the cybersecurity landscape is the rise of Non-Human Identities (NHIs). These identities — including API keys, service accounts, and cloud tokens — are on track to outnumber human identities by 100 to 1 in enterprise environments. As digital transformation evolves and cloud-based ecosystems expand, NHIs have become fundamental to business operations. Yet, they remain one of the most overlooked aspects of cybersecurity.
Entro Security Labs’ inaugural predictions report highlights the exponential growth of NHIs and how they are positioned to become the leading focus for cybersecurity strategies in 2025. Here are the key predictions and recommendations for CISOs as we navigate the changing cyber landscape.
Enterprise Security for AI Agents & Non-Human Identities
1. The Explosion of Non-Human Identities
By 2025, NHIs will outnumber human identities by 100 to 1 and will continue to increase. These machine identities are critical to cloud operations, SaaS integrations, and development pipelines. However, they are often overlooked and represent a growing security blind spot, leaving businesses vulnerable to cyber attacks.
As the number of NHIs proliferates, they will become prime targets for attackers, especially due to poor management practices. Enterprises must prioritize NHI lifecycle management, from discovery and secure NHIs and secrets at creation, to mitigate potential attacks.
2. AI’s Growing Role in Securing Secrets and Non-Human Identities
The sheer volume of NHIs will require AI-powered tools to manage them effectively and at scale. Traditional security measures will no longer suffice in the face of exponentially growing NHIs. AI will become essential in managing secrets and non-human identities, such as bots, automated systems, and machine-to-machine communications.
AI tools will help predict and prevent the usage patterns of NHIs and flag any unusual access, such as requests from unfamiliar locations or unexpected sequences to security teams. This detection ensures that machine identities are secured before they get a chance to become entry points for attackers.
3. AI Will Revolutionize Identity and Access Management (IAM)
AI will play a significant role in the evolution of identity security, moving from traditional access controls to more dynamic and context-aware models. AI-driven systems will analyze behavior patterns to determine access rights in real time.
AI will revoke access to an employee if it detects anomalous behavior, even if that employee’s credentials haven’t been stolen outright, based on real-time analysis of their actions.
4. The Growing Need for NHI Lifecycle Management
As NHIs increase, the complexity of managing them will become a growing concern for organizations and CISOs. It will become essential for enterprises to adopt NHI lifecycle management solutions to protect their ecosystems.
Organizations that invest in continuous discovery, real-time inventory, automated lifecycle management and anomaly detection will be better positioned to defend against emerging threats. Failure to properly manage these identities could lead to severe breaches, as we’ve already seen with several high-profile cases in 2024.
5. Zero-Trust Becomes a Necessity for NHIs
Zero-trust architecture (ZTA) will remain the gold standard for enterprise security and will evolve to address the unique challenges posed by NHIs. Applying ZTA for NHIs will require enterprises to take inventory of all their organizations’ identities. Once discovered, organizations must implement strong IAM solutions along with strict access controls, continuous authentication and granular permissions. Maintain strong encryption, use secure protocols and regularly rotate secrets for all your NHIs.
The Zero-Trust model must be adapted to secure these identities. Strong IAM solutions, continuous monitoring, and regular rotation of secrets will be essential for a robust security posture in 2025.
Preparing for 2025
Looking ahead, it’s evident that the traditional boundaries of cybersecurity are blurring. With NHIs growing tenfold, CISOs and security teams must evolve their cybersecurity strategies. This includes investing in NHI lifecycle management, leveraging AI for real time detection, and enforcing strong Zero-Trust principles across their ecosystems.
NHIs will dominate the cybersecurity landscape in 2025, and it will be the year of securing them.
