AWS and Cloudanix team co-authored this blog: Real-Time Threat and Anomaly Detection for Workloads on AWS
Non-Human Identity Security

For every human,
dozens of identities
you can't see.

Service accounts. API keys. CI/CD principals. OIDC tokens. Workload roles. AI coding agents asking for AWS creds. Your real identity surface is the non-human one — and most of it is ungoverned. Cloudanix gives all of it the same JIT, the same audit, and the same inventory as the humans.

✓ One JIT for humans + machines + agents ✓ MCP-native for AI coding agents ✓ Identity-stamped audit on every action
identity census · prod-aws-1
Humans
12
vs.
Non-human identities
487
of which
JIT-governed
47
👤 Humans
12
⚙️ Service accounts
93
🔑 API keys
154
🚀 CI/CD principals
118
Workload roles
78
AI coding agents ↗ growing fast
44
440 identities have no JIT policy attached.
The 47 governed identities account for 62% of all writes.
What you can't see, you can't govern

Your IAM tooling is built for humans.
The cloud isn't.

Three patterns show up in every NHI incident review — and none of them are fixed by another HR-style identity tool.

Static keys live forever

An access key minted in 2022 for a one-off cron job is still in a .env somewhere, still authenticated to production. Rotation is theory. Revocation is wishful thinking.

Shared service accounts hide humans

Every CloudTrail event reads svc-deploy. Which engineer triggered the prod migration? Which agent dropped the table? Audit and forensics go blind the moment identity is shared.

AI agents arrived without an identity model

Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Aider — all reaching for real cloud APIs, all carrying their developer's long-lived keys. The next credential incident is sitting in someone's ~/.aws/credentials right now.

Definition

What counts as a non-human identity?

Anything that can call your cloud APIs and isn't a person. Six categories — Cloudanix governs all six with the same JIT policy engine, the same audit trail, and the same inventory.

Service accounts

Application runtime identities — IAM users, GCP service accounts, Azure service principals. The OG NHI.

API keys & long-lived credentials

Static access keys, SaaS tokens, vendor API keys. The credentials that end up in .envrc and stay there.

CI/CD principals

GitHub Actions OIDC roles, GitLab Runners, Buildkite agents. They mint creds, they ship code, they're rarely audited.

Workload identities

EKS / GKE / AKS pod identities, EC2 instance profiles, Cloud Run service identities. The "the role that the pod uses."

Federated & third-party

Cross-account roles, vendor-installed roles (SaaS observability, MSP tooling), SAML/OIDC federation principals.

AI coding agents

Claude Code, Cursor, Kiro, Copilot, Aider — and any agent that calls cloud APIs over MCP. The fastest-growing NHI category in 2026.

How Cloudanix governs NHIs

Three motions. One policy engine.

01

Inventory — see all of them

Every identity in your AWS, Azure and GCP accounts is pulled into a single inventory — humans, service accounts, OIDC, instance profiles, federated roles, AI agents. Cross-cloud, normalized.

One identity table across clouds Last-used, last-rotated, attached policies, blast radius
02

JIT — zero standing privilege

The same JIT engine that humans use issues short-lived, scoped credentials to service accounts, CI/CD pipelines, and AI coding agents over MCP. Long-lived keys retire. Sessions die when work ends.

Slack / Teams / email approvals where needed STS on AWS · minted-and-revoked on SaaS · brokered DB sessions
03

Audit — identity-stamped, every event

Every action is linked to a real human owner — even when the cloud sees only the shared service account or the agent name. CloudTrail and DB logs become forensics-grade without changing how your apps authenticate.

"Claude acting on behalf of jen@" — not just "svc-deploy" Immutable · exportable · compliance-ready
A Cloudanix POV

JIT is not just CIEM with a timer.
And NHI security is not just IAM with more rows.

The CIEM market built itself around permission analysis — who can do what, who's over-privileged, where the least-privilege gaps are. Useful, necessary, not enough.

A non-human identity is a workflow, not a person. It mints credentials, calls APIs, dies, comes back as a new pod with a new role. Governing it means brokering credentials at the moment of use — not just analyzing policies at rest. That's why JIT for humans, JIT for service accounts, and JIT for AI agents are one product at Cloudanix, not three.

What Our Users Are Saying

Customer Reviews

Cloudanix is trusted by security leaders worldwide to deliver proactive, reliable, and cutting-edge cloud security.

One day, I changed the password of a root account, and my CTO called me within less than a minute to confirm if I did so. I was not expecting a reaction this quick. He told me Cloudanix alerted him of this password change and that he wanted to confirm as it was a critical security notification. I couldn't believe it!

Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh Agarwal
CEO, Airgap Networks

Compliance is one way of staying secure, but what I want is the ability to go deeper and attain 'true security.' Cloudanix provides us the capability to do so.

Vishal Madan
Vishal Madan
Head of Engineering, iMocha

Cloudanix is building for the future of the cloud, which makes the product all the more desirable.

Ritesh Agarwal
Ritesh Agarwal
CEO, Airgap Networks

Cloudanix gave us the visibility we were missing. Being able to move from permanent access to a robust Just-In-Time (JIT) workflow has fundamentally changed our security posture without slowing down our engineering velocity.

Pavan Kumar Lekkala
Pavan Kumar Lekkala
SRE Lead, HugoHub

We are excited to leverage Cloudanix's comprehensive multi-cloud DevSecOps solution to secure our production workloads on AWS. Cloudanix has demonstrated that it can solve many challenges that DevSecOps teams face while continually adding new features such as SOC2 compliance and drift detection.

Satish Mohan
Satish Mohan
Co-founder & CTO, Airgap Networks

Managing third-party partner access was once a major concern for our security posture. With Cloudanix JIT Cloud, we've effectively achieved zero third-party risk. We can now grant access confidently, knowing that it is temporary, audited, and automatically revoked, resulting in a 100% reduction in our privileged access exposure.

Okesh Badhiye
Okesh Badhiye
Head of Technical Engineering, Finfinity

The snooze feature and responsible alerts have helped us save time and prioritize what to tackle first.

Satish Mohan
Satish Mohan
Co-founder & CTO, Airgap Networks

Implementing Cloudanix JIT internally allowed us to practice what we preach. By eliminating permanent access to our own clouds and databases, we've neutralized the risk of standing privileges, ensuring our own 'keys to the kingdom' are never left exposed.

Girish Manghnani
Girish Manghnani
Managing Partner, Tech Inspira

The problem with permissions is a lot of times, the gaps are left open due to oversights from inside the organization itself. With Cloudanix's CIEM, we get a complete view of user permissions and access. This enables us to update the permissions, reducing the attack surface.

Nilesh Pethani
Nilesh Pethani
Application Architect, iMocha

In the world of Fintech, trust is our currency. Cloudanix provided the frictionless visibility we needed to secure our EKS workloads across AWS, ensuring we stay audit-ready for SOC2 and GDPR without slowing down our engineering velocity.

Amol Naik
Amol Naik
Head of Security & Infrastructure, HugoHub

Cloudanix delivered value within 5 minutes of onboarding. Continuous monitoring, timely detection, and excellent documentation helped us attain a great cloud security posture.

Divyanshu Shukla
Senior DevSecOps, Meesho

Technology strategies and business strategies are in a state of constant change which includes centralization and decentralization of responsibilities. Regardless of strategic shift, we still have intellectual property to protect. Cloudanix are critical partners for us in our public cloud security posture across our three cloud providers.

Jerry Locke
Jerry Locke
Senior Director Global Solutions Engineering, Eversana

Cloudanix has been amazing. They opened up a common Slack channel with us — and it feels like we are talking to our own team and getting things done with Cloud security. The support team is always available, friendly, helpful, and ready to go out of their way.

Satish Mohan
Satish Mohan
CTO, Airgap Networks

Beyond just access management, Cloudanix CSPM has given us a unified view of our AWS environment. The real-time alerting and anomaly detection allow us to prevent any untoward activity before it happens, which is critical for a marketplace connecting 50+ financial institutions.

Okesh Badhiye
Okesh Badhiye
Head of Technical Engineering, Finfinity

For a Fintech company, data is our most valuable — and most sensitive — asset. Cloudanix DAM hasn't just improved our visibility; it has given us control. The ability to mask data and prevent unauthorized queries in real-time is a game-changer for our compliance and customer trust.

Jiten Gala
Jiten Gala
President Engineering and Product, Kapittx

Our clients, especially in the Middle East financial sector, demand absolute accountability. Cloudanix JIT Cloud has been a competitive differentiator for us, allowing us to provide secure, governed access to customer accounts that meet their strictest audit and compliance requirements.

Girish Manghnani
Girish Manghnani
Managing Partner, Tech Inspira

Cloudanix is always on my team's lips because of its exceptional support. Be it a small or big query, Cloudanix has gone above and beyond to resolve them. This one's a keeper for us.

Sujit Karpe
Sujit Karpe
CTO, iMocha

For a long-lasting partnership, great support goes a long way. Cloudanix has delivered exceptional support whenever required. Their edge is their team is always ready to go beyond to solve any issues that we have. This speaks volumes about the culture at Cloudanix.

Akash Maheshwari
Akash Maheshwari
Co-founder, MoveInSync

Beyond the technology, Cloudanix feels like an extension of our own team. Their willingness to stand up a dedicated Middle East tenant for us and provide exceptional support at a sensible price makes them a long-term partner for Hugosave.

Surya Tamada
Surya Tamada
CTO, HugoHub

The real-time notifications that Cloudanix provides are a real lifesaver. Their adaptive notifications ensure that my team stays productive and doesn't get interrupted all the time.

Digvijay Singh
Staff Security Engineer, Meesho

The whole point in technological evolution is to help improve the world we live in. We must protect that and to do so requires an effective and efficient security strategy. The Cloudanix team helped make our public cloud security posture management strategy a reality. The symbiotic relationship we have allows for a continuous feedback loop which is how business should operate.

Larry Wheat
Larry Wheat
Staff Solutions Engineer, Eversana

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