Lean Non-Human Identities: Built for Speed and Safety
A build pipeline was burning CPU against a bot account no human had touched for months. It wasn't malicious. It was waste. And it was hidden in plain sight.
Lean non-human identities are the fix.
In modern systems, service accounts, automation tokens, CI/CD bots, and API keys make up most operational identities. They run jobs, trigger deployments, move data. They also pile up over time—unused, over-permissioned, and overlooked. Each stale identity is a crack in the wall.
A lean approach strips them down to what is essential.
The process starts with an inventory. Every non-human identity should have a clear owner, a single purpose, and an expiration plan. No shared secrets across environments. No dormant accounts clogging IAM. Define scope tightly—read-only when write is not required, scoped to a single repo or bucket, limited lifetime by design.
Rotation is non-negotiable.
Tokens and keys should have automated expiry. Use short-lived credentials tied to workflows. Audit trails must log every action. If an identity hasn’t been used in a fixed window, revoke it. This is not bureaucracy—it’s engineering hygiene.
Access boundaries enforce trust.
Treat every non-human identity like it could be compromised. Bind permissions to specific resources. Avoid wildcard grants. Integrate with centralized secrets management. Map identities to least privilege roles and update mappings when applications change.
Continuous review makes the system lean.
Schedule automated scans for unused accounts. Alert on scope creep when roles expand beyond original definitions. Roll new practices into onboarding so every service identity starts lean and stays lean.
The payoff is clear: reduced attack surface, less operational waste, cleaner audits, and faster incident response. Lean non-human identities are not overhead—they are built for speed and safety.
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