Non-Human Identity (NHI) Access Management Market by Offering (Solutions, Services), Identity Type (Application & Service Identities, API & OAuth Token Identities, Machine & Device Identities, Cryptographic Identities, AI Agent Identities), Deployment Mode, Organization Size, and Vertical — Global Forecast to 2036

What is the Non-Human Identity (NHI) Access Management Market Size?

The global non-human identity (NHI) access management market was valued at USD 11.3 billion in 2025. The market is expected to reach approximately USD 38.8 billion by 2036 from USD 12.2 billion in 2026, growing at a CAGR of 12.2% from 2026 to 2036. The growth of the overall NHI access management market is driven by the rapid proliferation of machine identities across cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud enterprise environments, and the growing recognition of unmanaged non-human identities as critical and frequently exploited cybersecurity attack vectors. As organizations accelerate their adoption of cloud-native architectures, DevOps workflows, robotic process automation (RPA), and AI-powered agents, the number of non-human identities—including service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, certificates, and workload identities—has grown exponentially, now outnumbering human identities by ratios exceeding 100:1 in many large enterprises. The inability of traditional identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) platforms to effectively govern these machine identities at scale is compelling organizations to invest in purpose-built NHI access management solutions. Escalating regulatory requirements, high-profile breaches attributed to compromised non-human credentials, and the rapid rise of autonomous AI agents are further accelerating market expansion across all major geographic regions.

Market Highlights: Global NHI Access Management Market

• In terms of revenue, the global NHI access management market is projected to reach USD 38.8 billion by 2036.
• The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% from 2026 to 2036.
• North America dominates the global NHI access management market with the largest market share in 2026, driven by the early adoption of cloud-native security frameworks, the presence of leading identity security vendors, and the rapid enterprise-scale deployment of AI agents and automated workflows.
• Asia-Pacific is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period, supported by accelerating cloud adoption, rapid digital transformation across financial services and manufacturing sectors, and growing cybersecurity investment in China, India, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
• By offering, the solutions segment holds the largest market share in 2026, particularly in supporting NHI discovery, secrets management, and access policy enforcement across complex enterprise environments.
• By identity type, the application and service identities segment holds the largest market share in 2026, reflecting the widespread reliance on service accounts and automated background processes across enterprise IT environments.
• By vertical, the BFSI segment holds the largest share of the overall market in 2026, driven by the extensive use of service accounts, APIs, and automated processes across core banking, payments, and digital financial platforms.

Market Overview and Insights

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Non-human identity (NHI) access management represents a purpose-built discipline within identity security that focuses on securing the identities and credentials used by machines, applications, and automated systems rather than human users. These identities include service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, machine certificates, SSH keys, database credentials, cloud workload identities, and increasingly, the identities created by AI agents and autonomous agentic systems. Unlike human identities, which follow predictable and time-bound interaction patterns, non-human identities operate continuously, authenticate at high frequencies, and span multiple environments simultaneously—behaviors that place them entirely outside the governance models of traditional IAM and PAM tools.

The NHI access management market encompasses a diverse range of solutions, from foundational secrets management vaults and certificate lifecycle management platforms to advanced identity security posture management (ISPM) tools, AI-powered anomaly detection engines, and fully integrated NHI lifecycle governance platforms. These solutions address the complete lifecycle of non-human credentials—covering discovery and inventory, access policy configuration, least-privilege enforcement, automated rotation, continuous monitoring, and threat detection and response. Leading providers such as CyberArk Software Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, and HashiCorp (IBM) have established broad platform capabilities, while purpose-built specialists including Oasis Security, Astrix Security, Entro Security, and Aembit are delivering highly focused and rapidly maturing toolsets that address emerging NHI risk categories such as AI agent identities and third-party application integrations.

The identity security landscape is at a critical inflection point. According to data from enterprise security research published in 2025, NHIs now outnumber human identities at ratios exceeding 144:1 in some large enterprise environments, and over 80% of identity-related breaches are linked to compromised non-human credentials such as service accounts and API keys. High-profile incidents—including the compromise of a legacy OAuth application at a major cloud platform, the exploitation of an API key at a leading remote support SaaS provider that subsequently affected a national treasury—have elevated NHI security to a board-level priority. CISOs globally now rank unmanaged machine identities among the top three cybersecurity risks facing their organizations.

At the same time, the rapid emergence of agentic AI systems—autonomous software agents that act independently, interact with APIs, and spawn their own credentials—is expanding the scope and complexity of the NHI problem well beyond what enterprises encountered even eighteen months ago. Industry surveys conducted in late 2025 indicate that 91% of security and identity professionals expect explosive growth in AI-generated identities through 2026, while 78% of organizations still lack formal policies for creating or decommissioning AI agent identities. This governance gap is creating substantial demand for next-generation NHI access management platforms that can operate at machine speed and scale.

What are the Key Trends in the NHI Access Management Market?

Rise of AI Agent Identities and Autonomous Credential Governance

The emergence of agentic AI systems is fundamentally reshaping the scope of non-human identity security. Enterprise environments are now home to growing populations of autonomous AI agents—built on large language models and integrated into core business workflows—that independently authenticate against APIs, generate credentials, and interact with sensitive enterprise data without direct human supervision. Platforms from vendors such as Astrix Security and Oasis Security are evolving to provide real-time inventory, just-in-time access provisioning, and behavioral anomaly detection specifically tailored to the credential patterns of AI agents. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has formally recognized NHIs as a foundational element of AI agent security architecture, and leading vendors are responding by embedding AI agent lifecycle management directly into their NHI governance platforms. This convergence of AI security and machine identity management is creating a new and high-growth product category within the broader identity security market.

Integration of Secrets Management with Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM)

A significant shift in how vendors position their NHI solutions is underway, as the previously siloed functions of secrets management and identity security posture management converge into unified platforms. Vendors including GitGuardian, Entro Security, and CyberArk's extended Conjur and Venafi platforms are building end-to-end workflows that connect secrets scanning and vault management with real-time posture assessment and threat response. GitGuardian's NHI Governance module, for example, integrates directly with secrets vaults from HashiCorp, CyberArk, AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure to provide contextual lifecycle visibility across the entire NHI estate. This convergence is enabling security teams to move beyond reactive credential rotation to proactive governance models built on continuous visibility, automated remediation, and policy-based enforcement—capabilities that are particularly valued in heavily regulated industries such as BFSI and healthcare, where credential exposure carries significant compliance consequences.

Market Summary

Market Dynamics

Drivers: Exponential Growth in Machine Identities and Escalating NHI-Related Breach Activity

A primary driver of the NHI access management market is the sheer volume and velocity at which non-human identities are being created across enterprise environments. Each new cloud workload deployment, containerized application, CI/CD pipeline build, microservices interaction, and RPA process generates additional machine credentials—often without centralized oversight or standardized governance. Research data from 2025 indicates that NHIs have grown by over 44% year-over-year, and that over 62% of cloud-based NHIs in large enterprise environments show no activity over a ninety-day period yet retain full access permissions—creating a persistent and largely invisible attack surface. Simultaneously, the breach impact of compromised non-human credentials is becoming impossible for enterprises to ignore. Notable incidents involving compromised API keys, OAuth tokens, and service accounts have exposed sensitive enterprise and government systems, making NHI governance a non-negotiable element of modern cybersecurity strategy. Regulatory frameworks, including PCI DSS 4.0 and the EU's NIS2 Directive, are beginning to formally address machine identity controls, adding compliance pressure to an already strong security-driven demand.

Opportunity: Zero Trust Architecture Adoption and Cloud-Native Application Proliferation

The global transition toward Zero Trust security architectures presents a compelling opportunity for NHI access management solution providers. Zero Trust principles—including least-privilege access, continuous verification, and just-in-time credential provisioning—are directly aligned with the core capabilities offered by NHI platforms. As enterprises redesign their security frameworks around Zero Trust, the management and continuous validation of machine identities becomes a foundational requirement rather than an optional enhancement. The rapid proliferation of cloud-native applications built on microservices, Kubernetes containers, and event-driven serverless architectures is further reinforcing this demand, as each architectural layer introduces new categories of ephemeral, short-lived machine credentials that must be provisioned, monitored, and rotated at scale. Organizations across BFSI, healthcare, and government sectors are making significant investments in Zero Trust programs through 2036, providing a sustained long-term growth pathway for NHI access management vendors.

Offering Insights

Why Does the Solutions Segment Lead the Market?

The solutions segment accounts for the largest share of the NHI access management market in 2026. This dominance is primarily driven by the strong enterprise demand for platform-based tools that address NHI discovery, secrets management, access policy governance, and identity threat detection in an integrated manner. Enterprises managing complex hybrid environments require software platforms capable of providing unified visibility across thousands or millions of machine credentials spanning on-premises infrastructure, multiple cloud providers, and third-party SaaS integrations. Leading platforms from CyberArk (including Conjur and Venafi capabilities), Microsoft Entra Workload ID, and HashiCorp Vault (IBM) are widely adopted as foundational solutions for secrets management, while purpose-built NHI governance platforms from Oasis Security, Astrix Security, Entro Security, and Akeyless are gaining rapid traction for their specialized ISPM and threat detection capabilities.

However, the services segment is expected to record the fastest growth during the forecast period, driven by increasing enterprise demand for expert-led NHI program design, platform implementation, and managed monitoring services. As organizations without mature identity security practices seek to establish NHI governance programs from the ground up, demand for consulting, integration, and managed services is rising sharply.

Identity Type Insights

How Does the Application & Service Identities Segment Dominate?

Based on identity type, the application and service identities segment holds the largest share of the NHI access management market in 2026. Service accounts and application process identities are the most widely deployed category of non-human credentials in enterprise environments, supporting automated workflows, batch processing jobs, monitoring agents, and background system operations across virtually every industry. These identities are frequently created in an ad hoc manner by development and DevOps teams, often carry excessive privileges inherited from initial configuration, and rarely undergo regular review or rotation. The resulting credential sprawl makes application and service identities the primary focus of NHI security programs and a dominant revenue driver for solution providers.

The AI agent identities segment is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period, reflecting the accelerating enterprise adoption of autonomous AI systems. As organizations deploy AI agents at scale across customer engagement, process automation, and data analytics functions, the credentials associated with these agents—including dynamically generated API keys, short-lived access tokens, and model-to-model authentication credentials—are emerging as a new and high-risk identity category that existing platforms are rapidly evolving to address.

Deployment Mode Insights

Why Does the Cloud Segment Lead the Deployment Mode Market?

Based on deployment mode, the cloud segment holds the largest share of the NHI access management market in 2026. The widespread deployment of cloud-native applications, APIs, and automated workloads requiring scalable non-human access controls has driven strong adoption of cloud-hosted NHI platforms. Cloud deployments offer enterprises the elasticity, integration depth with hyperscaler identity services (AWS IAM, Azure Entra, Google Cloud IAM), and API-first architectures needed to manage large and dynamically changing populations of machine identities.

The hybrid segment is expected to record the fastest growth during the forecast period. As enterprises operate across a combination of legacy on-premises infrastructure and cloud-native platforms, the need for consistent NHI access policies, centralized credential visibility, and unified governance across distributed environments is driving rapid adoption of hybrid deployment models. Regulatory and data residency requirements in sectors such as BFSI, healthcare, and government are further reinforcing the preference for hybrid architectures.

Vertical Insights

Why Does the BFSI Segment Lead the Market?

The BFSI segment commands the largest share of the global NHI access management market in 2026. Financial institutions operate some of the most complex and credential-intensive IT environments in the world, with thousands of service accounts, payment API integrations, automated trading and risk management systems, and inter-system authentication processes operating continuously. The high regulatory scrutiny applied to credential security in banking and financial services—spanning frameworks such as PCI DSS, SOX, and regional financial regulations—makes proactive NHI governance a compliance imperative rather than a discretionary investment. Leading financial institutions are deploying NHI platforms to achieve continuous credential inventory, automated privilege review, and real-time threat response for machine identities operating across their core banking, digital payments, and capital markets infrastructure.

The IT & ITeS segment is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period, driven by the concentration of cloud-native application development, DevOps adoption, and AI agent deployments within technology companies and IT services providers, where NHI proliferation is most intense.

Regional Insights

How is North America Maintaining Dominance in the Global NHI Access Management Market?

North America holds the largest share of the global NHI access management market in 2026. This dominance is primarily attributed to the concentration of leading identity security vendors, the early and widespread adoption of cloud-native and Zero Trust security architectures, and the scale of enterprise investments in cybersecurity across the United States. The U.S. market benefits from strong regulatory pressure in sectors including financial services, healthcare, and government, as well as from high enterprise awareness of NHI-related breach risks following several high-profile incidents. The presence of major solution providers including CyberArk Software Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, BeyondTrust Corporation, Delinea Inc., SailPoint Technologies, Inc., Saviynt, Inc., Aembit, Inc., and Oasis Security—many of which are headquartered or have significant operations in North America—supports a robust and competitive market environment.

Which Factors Support Europe and Asia-Pacific Market Growth?

Europe represents a significant and growing share of the global NHI access management market. The region's growth is driven by stringent data protection and cybersecurity regulatory frameworks, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the NIS2 Directive, and the EU AI Act—each of which imposes requirements that intersect directly with machine identity governance. Countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands are at the forefront of enterprise NHI security adoption, with financial services and public sector organizations leading investment. GitGuardian, headquartered in France, represents a prominent European-headquartered vendor in this space, while global platforms from Thales (France) contribute machine identity and cryptographic credential management capabilities to the region's market.

Asia-Pacific is projected to register the fastest growth during the forecast period. Rapid digital transformation, aggressive cloud migration, and growing government-led cybersecurity investment across China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia are generating substantial demand for identity security solutions. The region's expanding BFSI and IT sectors, combined with increasing regulatory attention to cloud security and data governance, are establishing Asia-Pacific as a high-priority growth market for NHI access management vendors seeking international expansion.

Key Players

Companies such as CyberArk Software Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, HashiCorp, Inc. (IBM), and BeyondTrust Corporation lead the global NHI access management market with comprehensive identity security and secrets management platforms covering a broad range of enterprise NHI use cases. Meanwhile, players including Delinea Inc., SailPoint Technologies, Inc., Saviynt, Inc., Ping Identity (Thales), and Teleport focus on privileged access governance, identity security posture management, and workload identity solutions targeting enterprise and cloud-native environments. Purpose-built and emerging NHI specialists including Oasis Security, Astrix Security, Entro Security, GitGuardian, Aembit, Inc., Akeyless Security Ltd., and Clutch Security are advancing the market through focused innovation in AI agent identity governance, real-time NHI threat detection, secrets lifecycle management, and automated credential remediation.

Key Questions Answered