Managing Non-Human Identities for SOC 2 Compliance

A machine deploys code at midnight. No human pushes the button. The commit is live, tested, and serving traffic before anyone wakes up. SOC 2 still applies.

Non-human identities—service accounts, bots, automation pipelines, CI/CD agents—are now first-class actors in modern infrastructure. They deploy, read secrets, access databases, and run migrations. Without them, your stack breaks. But without controls, they break compliance too. SOC 2 does not care that an identity is not flesh and blood. It cares about how access is granted, monitored, and revoked.

For SOC 2 compliance, non-human identities must follow the same principles as human users:

• Access Control: Limit permissions to the minimum needed. No blanket admin rights, even for automation.
• Authentication: Use strong methods for identity verification. API keys must be rotated, secrets stored securely, and machine credentials protected in vaults.
• Audit Logging: Every action must be traceable. If a bot changes production code, the log should show who—or what—did it, when, and from where.
• Ownership Assignment: Someone must be accountable for every non-human identity. Compliance fails when a service account is orphaned.
• Lifecycle Management: Create, update, and retire credentials with the same rigor used for employee onboarding/offboarding.

Ignoring non-human identities risks silent privilege creep: stale service accounts with unchecked permissions, leftover credentials from retired systems, rogue automation scripts with full database access. In an audit, these are red flags. SOC 2 requires clear evidence that all identities are controlled and monitored.

The hardest part is visibility. Most teams track users but lose sight of bots. To stay compliant, every pipeline and service account must be cataloged. Map out what each one does, which systems it touches, and who owns it. Run regular reviews. Remove or downgrade access that is no longer needed.

Automation accelerates development. It also expands your threat surface. Treat non-human identities as equal citizens in your compliance strategy. Build them into your access policies, enforce credential hygiene, and log their every move. Do this, and SOC 2 audits stop being a guessing game.

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