# nhi

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/glossary/nhi/
Last updated: 2026-08-29
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

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Any identity that is not a person: service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, certificates, workloads, and AI agents. NHIs now outnumber human identities in most organizations and are frequently over-permissioned and under-governed.

The count is the headline (NHIs outnumber humans by a large multiple almost everywhere) but the governance gap is the actual problem: these identities are created by engineers during delivery, inherit whatever credential was nearest, have no owner, and appear in no access review. AI agents are making them faster. Start with ownership and expiry, not with a discovery tool that produces an unactionable inventory.

See also: [what is non-human identity](https://startwithidentity.com/guides/fundamentals/what-is-non-human-identity/), [service account](https://startwithidentity.com/glossary/service-account/), [workload identity](https://startwithidentity.com/glossary/workload-identity/), [machine identity vendors](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/machine-identity/)