The lights on the dashboard turned red. Something had shifted in the system, and the Non-Human Identities Quarterly Check-In was overdue.
Non-human identities—service accounts, machine tokens, API keys, bots—don’t announce when they become a problem. They accumulate. They get stale. They drift from their original purpose. Over time, these unmonitored actors can gain unnecessary permissions, access sensitive systems, or create compliance gaps.
A quarterly check-in forces visibility. It creates a regular pulse where every non-human identity is audited. You confirm ownership. You confirm scope. You confirm expiration. You remove what no longer serves an active role. You rotate credentials. You log the changes for audit trails. The process is simple on paper but precise execution matters.
Start with a complete discovery. Pull an authoritative list from identity providers, cloud IAM systems, CI/CD pipelines, and internal directories. Remove duplicates. Flag any accounts without a clear, documented owner. Then review privileges: compare actual usage with intended permissions. Reduce to the minimum required.