Non-Human Identity (NHI)

Any digital identity that is not a human user, including AI agents, service accounts, API keys, bots, scripts, and automated workflows.

NHIs now vastly outnumber human identities in most enterprise environments. Giving each agent its own identity is the foundation for attributing, evaluating, and trusting what that agent actually does in production.

Closely related concepts include SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone), Machine Identity, Trust Chain, Workload Identity. Each is defined in the Prefactor glossary.