Who's Really Using Your SaaS? The Rise of Non-Human Identities Poses New Security Risks

Non-human identities like AI assistants, automation bots, and API tokens are proliferating across business SaaS ecosystems, often with extensive access privileges but minimal oversight. Several major breaches in 2023-2025 have already exploited these overlooked machine credentials, highlighting an urgent security gap in modern cloud environments.

Machine identities now outnumber human users in many organizations, yet they rarely receive the same security scrutiny. About one-third of SaaS integrations have excessive access to sensitive data, creating significant vulnerabilities that attackers are increasingly targeting through compromised tokens, keys, and service accounts.

Recent Breaches Reveal the Dangers of Overlooked Machine Identities

The risks of unmanaged non-human identities (NHIs) have materialized in several high-profile breaches that demonstrate how these digital entities can become silent attack vectors.

In August 2025, hackers compromised Salesloft's platform and stole OAuth access tokens for its Drift chatbot integration with Salesforce. By hijacking these tokens, which functioned as trusted machine identities between services, attackers gained backdoor access to Salesforce CRM data across hundreds of organizations. During a ten-day campaign, they extracted sensitive records and even retrieved stored AWS keys and Snowflake tokens from support case attachments.

The New York Times faced a similar breach in January 2024 when attackers discovered an exposed GitHub API token that had inadvertently been made public. This machine credential provided broad privileges without requiring interactive login, allowing attackers to access approximately 270 GB of internal source code and data.

Cloudflare's 2023 security incident showcased another dimension of the problem. Following the Okta breach, Cloudflare rotated some 5,000 user credentials but overlooked a non-human account—an API token tied to a service account. Attackers leveraged this forgotten token to gain access to Cloudflare's Atlassian suite, effectively bypassing the human password reset effort and demonstrating how a single forgotten machine identity can undermine otherwise strong security measures.

These cases illustrate a common pattern: attackers targeting the path of least resistance through unmanaged, over-privileged, or orphaned machine credentials. Organizations should implement comprehensive identity and access management practices across all digital entities to prevent such vulnerabilities.

How Dynamic SaaS Security Platforms Address the Challenge

Traditional identity security approaches fall short when dealing with the complex web of non-human identities. Dynamic SaaS Security Platforms offer a more adaptive approach to this evolving threat landscape.

Unified Visibility of All Identities

Security teams need comprehensive visibility into every machine identity operating within their SaaS environment. Dynamic platforms automatically discover third-party app connections, service accounts, API tokens, and scripts across the entire SaaS stack, illuminating previously hidden identities.

This discovery process maps out not only the existence of these entities but also their connections, permissions, and activity patterns, creating a complete picture of the organization's machine identity landscape.

Least Privilege Enforcement

Not all integrations require the same level of access. Dynamic security tools analyze NHI permissions against actual usage patterns to identify overly permissive or high-risk access rights.

For example, these platforms can detect when an OAuth app requests unusual data scopes or when a service account has admin-level API privileges it doesn't need. By enforcing least privilege for machine identities—ensuring each has only the access required for its specific function—organizations can dramatically reduce potential damage if credentials are compromised.

Continuous Anomaly Monitoring

Effective security requires constant vigilance. Dynamic platforms establish behavioral baselines for each machine identity—tracking which systems it typically connects to, from where, and how often—and then flag deviations from these patterns.

If an API key suddenly begins extracting massive amounts of data during off-hours, or if a normally quiet integration starts accessing sensitive finance records, these anomalous activities trigger immediate alerts. This continuous monitoring helps detect potential compromises or misuse before significant damage occurs.

Remediation and Rotation

When a machine identity is compromised, rapid response is essential. Dynamic SaaS Security Platforms integrate with SaaS applications to automate remediation actions. Upon detecting suspicious activity such as a potentially malicious OAuth app installation or a leaked key in use, the platform can automatically revoke tokens, disable integrations, or quarantine accounts to cut off attacker access.

These platforms also enforce credential hygiene by automating the rotation of secrets and setting appropriate expiration periods for tokens, reducing the risk posed by stale credentials.

Security Posture Assessment

A crucial enhancement to any NHI security strategy is regular security posture assessment. Organizations should implement automated tools that continuously evaluate the risk profile of each machine identity based on its permissions, usage patterns, and potential impact if compromised. This assessment should generate a risk score that helps security teams prioritize remediation efforts and resource allocation.

Implementing robust SaaS data security protocols specifically designed for machine identities becomes essential as these digital entities continue to proliferate across business environments.

Security Checklist for Managing Non-Human Identities

Organizations can take several preventative steps to mitigate the proliferation and risk of non-human identities:

1. Discover all machine identities across your SaaS environment using automated tools rather than manual processes

2. Classify each NHI by type and function to apply appropriate risk controls

3. Assess privilege scope for each machine identity, flagging those with admin or sensitive data access

4. Enforce least privilege by ensuring tokens and apps can only access what they need

5. Monitor identity behavior for anomalies against established usage baselines

6. Apply compensating controls like IP restrictions or scoped access where traditional MFA isn't available

7. Automate credential rotation and implement expiration policies for unused tokens

8. Detect and disable orphaned or "ghost" machine identities not tied to active workflows

9. Implement automated response capabilities to quarantine suspicious tokens or disable rogue applications

10. Maintain a real-time inventory of all third-party integrations, especially those connected via user consent

11. Create dedicated security policies specifically for non-human identities that address their unique risk profiles and operational requirements

12. Conduct regular security training for developers and administrators who create and manage machine identities to ensure they understand security best practices

Securing Your SaaS Environment: Beyond Human Users

As organizations continue to embrace automation and integration in their SaaS ecosystems, securing non-human identities has become as crucial as protecting employee accounts. The proliferation of these machine entities introduces risks that traditional identity security approaches weren't designed to address.

Dynamic SaaS Security Platforms offer comprehensive visibility, continuous monitoring, and automated remediation that can help organizations regain control of their expanding digital identity landscape without hindering innovation or efficiency.

For security leaders, this represents a necessary evolution in identity security strategy—moving beyond simply managing human users to encompassing the full spectrum of entities that access critical business applications.

The integration of AI services into business workflows further complicates the non-human identity landscape. As organizations increasingly deploy AI as a Service solutions across their technology stack, each AI agent requires its own set of access permissions and identity controls. These AI-powered identities often need broad data access to function effectively, creating additional security considerations that must be managed proactively.

By implementing the right tools and practices for managing non-human identities, organizations can continue leveraging the productivity benefits of automation and integration while protecting sensitive data from increasingly sophisticated attacks that target these often-overlooked access points.

According to a recent Gartner report, by 2026, organizations with mature identity security programs that specifically address non-human identities will experience 60% fewer identity-related security incidents than those without such protections. This statistic underscores the critical importance of addressing this growing attack surface before it becomes your organization's most significant vulnerability.