Protecting Non-Human Identities in the Cloud: How Microsoft Security Safeguards AI Agents and Service Accounts

As cloud and AI adoption soar, non-human identities (NHIs) like service accounts and AI agents are critical yet vulnerable assets. Microsoft’s comprehensive security solutions offer visibility, governance, and threat detection to protect these machine identities, safeguarding modern enterprises from evolving cyber threats. Unique :

Expanding the Identity Perimeter: The Rise of Non-Human Identities

With cloud apps and AI booming, machine-to-machine access is skyrocketing. Non-human identities (NHIs) like service accounts and AI agents are now essential in modern workflows. Yet, they often fly under the radar in security strategies.

What’s New: Understanding Non-Human Identities

Non-human identities include service accounts, AI agents, OAuth apps, and cloud workload identities. Each has unique roles but shares a common risk: they often hold high privileges. This makes them prime targets for cybercriminals.

“Non-human identities greatly outnumber their human counterparts and often come highly privileged.”

For example, Copilot Studio is already used by over 230,000 organizations, including 90% of the Fortune 500, to build AI agents and automations. This growth means NHIs will only become more critical—and more vulnerable.

Major Updates: Microsoft’s Unified Defense for NHIs

Microsoft Security offers a full lifecycle solution to monitor, secure, and manage NHIs. Key features include:

Full-spectrum discovery: Identify all NHIs and secrets across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Risk analysis: Deep insights into privileges, activity, and ownership help prioritize threats.
Secrets management: Detect and remediate secrets stored insecurely.
Governance: Manage stale accounts, enforce credential rotation, and secure decommissioning.
Threat detection: Alerts on suspicious activities like privilege escalations or risky machine communications.

“Microsoft brings these protections together, so you can secure every identity—human and non-human—across your digital estate.”

Tools like Defender for Identity automatically classify service accounts, while Attack Paths mapping reveals risky lateral movement paths attackers could exploit.

What’s Important to Know: Why NHIs Matter for Your Security

NHIs are often overlooked but vital to secure. Their interconnected nature means gaps in one area can expose the entire system. Microsoft’s expertise in identity, security, and AI uniquely positions it to protect these digital identities.

By consolidating visibility, control, and protection across AI, cloud, apps, and devices, organizations can reduce attack surfaces and stay ahead of threats.

And this is just the beginning. Microsoft is actively enhancing AI-driven defenses to keep pace with evolving threats targeting NHIs and AI agents alike.

Final Thoughts

As non-human identities grow, so do the risks. Embracing comprehensive security strategies for NHIs is no longer optional—it’s critical. Thanks to Microsoft’s integrated solutions, organizations can confidently secure their entire identity perimeter in this new digital era.

Non-human identities outnumber human ones and often hold high privileges, making them prime targets for cyberattacks.

Lack of dedicated teams and policies leads to poor visibility and governance of NHIs, increasing organizational risk.

Microsoft Security provides full lifecycle management, including discovery, risk analysis, and secrets management for NHIs.

Integrated threat detection alerts on suspicious NHI activities like privilege escalation and risky machine-to-machine communications.

Microsoft’s AI-powered tools enable proactive defense by mapping attack paths and automating identity protection across hybrid environments.

From the New blog articles in Microsoft Community Hub