Every day at your organization, new SaaS app integrations are created—each one potentially opening a new door for attackers. In 2024 alone, breaches exploiting non-human identities (NHIs) cost companies an average of $4.88 million, according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute.
While identity and access controls have traditionally focused on human users, non-human identities now vastly outnumber them—and they often have privileged access to sensitive data like source code and customer information. Without proper visibility and management, these overlooked accounts create easy entry points for breaches and data leaks.
Let’s start with the basics. Non-human identities (NHIs) are automated or generated accounts that often receive broad and highly permissive access to tools, resources, and data upon creation. They help businesses integrate apps, streamline workflows, and manage resources—but they also introduce major security risks when left unchecked.
Common examples of NHIs include:
With the explosion of low-code tooling and native SaaS marketplaces, it’s easier than ever for employees to connect new apps to your ecosystem. But as your workforce rapidly adopts more SaaS solutions, tracking which apps have access to what data—and how they’re connected—becomes a daunting challenge.
NHIs are growing at an unprecedented rate, outnumbering human users by a staggering 45:1, according to CyberArk research. This explosive growth has created blind spots that attackers actively exploit, like risky app integrations and API key. And because non-human identities typically receive far less monitoring than human users, they're especially easy to compromise.
Securing your SaaS environment starts with knowing where your critical data resides and who—or what—has access to it. One of the most common and riskiest forms of NHIs are app-to-app integrations—automated connections that perform key business functions but often operate outside the scope of traditional security oversight. Understanding the potential risks of new and existing app integrations and managing their access is essential to your overall security.
To help you manage these risks, Nudge Security's app-to-app integrations table provides deep visibility into your integrations, mapping and prioritizing them by risk level. This allows you to:
With AI-powered risk insights, you get contextualized findings that help you proactively mitigate security threats—either by resolving them yourself or empowering users to take corrective action through automated security nudges.
To see how Nudge Security helps you manage non-human identities within your SaaS estate, explore our interactive demo:
Your organization could already be at risk from unmanaged or unknown NHIs. Don’t wait for a breach to protect your organization's essential data. Try Nudge Security for free and regain control over your SaaS security.
Start your 14-day free trial and see how we can help you identify, understand, and resolve NHI risks before they become costly incidents.
