Microsoft Entra Non-Human Identities

The API key just landed in your repo. It isn’t tied to a person. It controls production.

Microsoft Entra Non-Human Identities are accounts for software, services, and automation — not for humans. They handle machine-to-machine authentication, secrets management, and system-level access. In modern cloud environments, they run core integrations without a single manual login.

In Entra ID, non-human identities can take the form of service principals, managed identities, and app registrations. Each type offers secure tokens, granular permissions, and lifecycle management. They replace the risky practice of embedding static credentials in code.

Service principals are ideal for apps that call Azure APIs. You grant them roles with least privilege, and rotate secrets through Azure Key Vault. Managed identities go further: they remove the need to store credentials at all. Azure handles the identity, token issuance, and revocation. App registrations act as the blueprint for both, defining how external or internal applications authenticate.

Security depends on precision. Assign only the permissions needed. Monitor sign-in logs and audit every identity’s activity. Use conditional access policies even for non-human accounts. Attackers target automation accounts because they often hold powerful roles and run without human oversight.

Microsoft Entra’s governance tools help track ownership, expiration, and compliance. Pair them with infrastructure-as-code so that identities are created, updated, and retired automatically. This closes gaps caused by manual processes and keeps environments aligned with policy.

Non-human identities are now infrastructure. Treat them as critical assets. Secure them with the same rigor as human accounts, and automate their management to reduce human error.

Want to see how non-human identities work seamlessly in production? Go to hoop.dev and see it live in minutes.