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Concepts

The Non-Human Identities Procurement Process

Andrios Robert

• 1 min read

A red cursor blinks. An automated request arrives without a human behind it. The system has seconds to decide how to respond.

The non-human identities procurement process starts here. Machines, services, APIs, and bots now hold credentials and permissions once reserved for people. They belong to your infrastructure. They act, execute, and communicate. But they still need identity, governance, and onboarding.

Procurement for non-human identities is not about contracts in filing cabinets. It is an operational workflow built to register, verify, and authorize digital actors that exist entirely in code. This process must be exact. A misstep creates attack surfaces. A delay breaks automation.

The workflow is straightforward but unforgiving:

  1. Initiation – A new service or bot requests credentials.
  2. Verification – The request is checked against internal policy and compliance requirements.
  3. Assignment – Unique identity and authentication keys are issued.
  4. Provisioning – Permissions and resource scopes are granted, aligned with least-privilege principles.
  5. Maintenance – Keys are rotated, access logs reviewed, identities retired when no longer used.

Key elements in a high-performing non-human identities procurement process:

  • Automated pipelines for identity creation and decommission.
  • Centralized management of machine credentials.
  • Audit trails for every request and approval.
  • Real-time policy enforcement to block unauthorized actions.

Integrating procurement into CI/CD means non-human identities come online as part of code deployment. Automated governance ensures they never exceed defined limits. This creates speed without loss of control.

A mature process unifies procurement with identity lifecycle management. Security teams get visibility. Engineering teams get operational reliability. Both get fewer incidents and faster delivery.

Execute all of this with tooling that is fast, observable, and secure. See the non-human identities procurement process run live in minutes with hoop.dev.