Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

By 2025, non-human identities (like service accounts, API keys, and bots) will outnumber human identities by 45:1 in cloud environments. Yet many organizations still rely on static IAM roles and manual provisioning, leaving them exposed to credential sprawl, insider risk, and compliance violations. That’s where modern Enterprise Identity Management (EIM) comes in. Enterprise software development is increasingly cloud native.

If you’re a security vendor and you get breached, you’re not just another victim; you’re a failed promise. A broken fire alarm in a burning building. When Okta disclosed a breach in October 2023, its stock dropped nearly 11%, wiping out close to $2 billion in market cap in a single day – a stark reminder of how quickly trust evaporates.

You can’t secure what you don’t manage. Mismanaged access is an open invitation for breaches. Overprivileged users and a surge in non-human identities (like service accounts and API keys) are quietly expanding your organization’s attack surface. Yet many still rely on outdated, manual IAM practices that can’t keep up with modern infrastructure. It’s not just a theory—38% of breaches trace back to stolen credentials.

“Identity is the new perimeter” had its moment. But as cloud-native environments and distributed teams become the norm, this mantra is starting to show its age. The risks tied to static, identity-based access are now too big to ignore, and no one sees that more clearly than security vendors themselves.

DevOps teams are moving faster than ever deploying AI agents, orchestrating automated workflows, and scaling infrastructure across cloud platforms. But as speed increases, so does the attack surface. Traditional access models weren’t built for today’s dynamic, machine-heavy environments, and static privileges have become one of the biggest security liabilities in SaaS.

SSH keys may be the riskiest credentials you’re not thinking about. In today’s DevOps pipelines, GitLab SSH keys silently facilitate critical operations—from pushing code to deploying infrastructure. Just because GitLab SSH keys are unassuming doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Unlike passwords, SSH keys don’t trigger alerts when reused, leaked, or silently exploited. Unfortunately, attackers know this, too. 88% of all web application attacks involved stolen credentials.

Machine identities have quietly become the backbone of digital infrastructure, outnumbering human users in most enterprise environments. While they don’t forget passwords or call tech support, they do introduce a unique set of security and operational risks. Unlike human users, machine identities (like service accounts, API keys, bots, and microservices) often operate with highly permissive access rights and weak or nonexistent authorization policies.