by Konstantinos Noussias, ADACOM Trust Services Director
Identities are at the heart of every interaction—whether it's a user logging into their bank account, a system accessing sensitive corporate data, or a device transmitting telemetry in real time. With the surge in cyber threats, weak authentication mechanisms have increasingly become a focal point for exploitation. This landscape is not confined to human users alone; it now encompasses a vast network of digital identities, from individuals to non-human entities like Internet of Things (IoT) devices, automated scripts, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Strong authentication for both human and non-human identities (NHIs) is critical to securing today’s hyper-connected environments. Let's explore the multifaceted challenges and solutions around authentication in a world where both human and non-human IDs coexist, thrive, and are at risk.
The Increasing Complexity of Digital Identity Ecosystems
The rapid adoption of IoT, AI, and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication has led to an explosion of digital identities within and across organizational networks. While human IDs represent individual users, non-human identities encompass an array of entities such as IoT devices, bots, service accounts, and AI models—all requiring secure authentication.
According to the Enterprise Strategy Group 2024 report, NHIs today outnumber human users in modern enterprises by 20 to 1, complicating their management across an enterprise. This disparity signifies a critical area where security vulnerabilities can emerge, with 46% of organizations confirming breaches via NHIs.
Human and non-human IDs differ not only in volume but also in authentication requirements. Human IDs often prioritize user experience and ease of access. In contrast, the vast digital ecosystem of diverse NHIs demands stringent security and seamless, continuous access to ensure operations run smoothly. For instance, an IoT device operating in a manufacturing plant needs continuous network access, often with almost no human intervention.
The Digital Identity Risks
As the digital identity ecosystem expands, so do the risks associated with weak authentication. Numerous breaches highlight how attackers leverage vulnerabilities in authentication systems to compromise human and machine identities. Case studies abound: one such instance involved an attack on a cloud-based service where compromised human credentials provided unauthorized access to sensitive data.
The implications of poor authentication are even more daunting for non-human IDs. Industrial control systems, critical infrastructure, and connected medical devices rely on secure machine identities. These systems become targets when weakly authenticated, leading to operational disruptions and potential safety risks.
The rise in non-human identities significantly increases the attack surface: 52% of companies anticipate a 20% increase in NHIs in the coming year, underscoring the challenge of securing these proliferating entities. When left unmonitored, service accounts, tokens, and API keys—all NHIs, become prime targets. With almost half of the breaches stemming from NHIs, it’s clear that overlooking non-human IDs can have severe consequences for data integrity and privacy.
Authentication Strategies for Human IDs
Strong authentication must strike a balance between security and convenience for human users. Biometric methods (such as fingerprint, facial recognition, and iris scans), token-based authentication, and behavioral analysis all offer layers of protection. These methods aim to ensure that only authorized users access sensitive resources. Organizations adopting these strategies must also account for user experience (UX) to avoid hindering productivity.
Emerging techniques, such as zero-trust frameworks and context-aware authentication, further enhance human ID security. A zero-trust model continuously verifies identities and adapts authentication requirements based on the context of access, such as location and time, reducing the risk of compromised human credentials. Context-aware authentication provides additional verification by analyzing real-time behavior and environmental factors, making it challenging for attackers to spoof a user’s identity.
Strong Authentication for Non-Human IDs
Non-human identities bring their own unique set of challenges in terms of authentication. Scalability, interoperability, and complexity make securing these entities more difficult. As NHIs multiply across organizations, authentication strategies must scale seamlessly while ensuring security. Unlike human users, non-human IDs require highly automated and secure protocols to maintain uninterrupted operations. Here, cryptographic methods, digital certificates, and secure tokenization are essential in verifying NHIs.
Cryptographic certificates are effective for non-human IDs, enabling secure, mutual authentication between machines. In M2M communications, certificates authenticate each device without human intervention, minimizing risks. Token-based strategies are also widely used, where tokens, such as JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), enable secure access across systems.
Examples of effective M2M authentication strategies can be seen in smart factories and healthcare systems, where IoT devices continuously communicate to manage operations, as patient data security is paramount. The demand for securing NHIs is so pressing that 4 out of 5 organizations plan to increase their spending on non-human identity security, according to the ESG report.
Balancing Security and Usability
While strong authentication is essential, maintaining operational efficiency without sacrificing security is challenging. Businesses must find ways to implement robust authentication mechanisms that do not hinder workflows. Adaptive authentication—where the system adjusts the authentication level based on real-time context and risk assessment—offers a promising solution. AI-driven monitoring further enhances security by continuously analyzing network traffic and identifying anomalies, helping to prevent unauthorized access by suspicious non-human entities.
Regulated industries like finance and healthcare face stringent compliance requirements regarding identity and access management. Best practices in these sectors often include multifactor authentication (MFA) and regular auditing of non-human IDs, ensuring that all identities are accounted for and continuously monitored.
Adaptive authentication and AI-driven monitoring thus strike a balance, providing strong security while maintaining operational fluidity, especially in environments with high volumes of NHIs.
Keeping your IDs safe
The complexity of today’s digital identity landscape, with both human and non-human IDs in abundance, underscores the critical role of strong authentication. The risk grows as NHIs multiply, and many organizations struggle to manage the expanding attack surface effectively despite increasing their expenditures on non-human identity security. A future-proofed security framework demands robust, scalable, and adaptable authentication mechanisms to protect against emerging threats.
Investment in robust authentication for all identities is fundamental to cybersecurity resilience. ADACOM offers a broad portfolio of trust services to include cryptographically-bound certificates, digital signatures, PKI services, and identity verification to help businesses create an integrated HI and NHI security approach to thrive in an ever-evolving threat landscape.
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