Machine Identity Management
Machine identity management is the governance of credentials used by non-human entities — certificates, keys, service accounts and workload identities — across their entire life cycle.
What is Machine Identity Management?
Definition
Machine Identity Management is the governance of credentials used by things rather than people: TLS certificates, SSH keys, API tokens, service accounts and workload identities. It matters because machine identities now outnumber human ones in most estates by a wide margin, and unlike employees they are created by automation, rarely inventoried and almost never decommissioned. In cybersecurity the two recurring failures are always the same — a certificate nobody renewed, which takes a service down, and a key nobody rotated, which stays valid for whoever eventually finds it.
Role in cybersecurity
Machine Identity Management plays an important role in building organizational resilience against cyber threats. Implementing appropriate mechanisms in this area is required by regulations such as NIS2, DORA and ISO 27001.