An attacker does not need an employee password to reach your business systems. A contractor account, vendor login, service account, API key, cloud workload, or automated agent can also carry authority. If that identity is compromised or granted too much access, the attacker may be able to read data, change records, or disrupt operations while appearing to act through a trusted connection.
That is why employee phishing training and multifactor authentication, though important, are not a complete identity security strategy. The question for a CEO is broader: Who or what can access our critical systems, what can each identity do, and who is accountable for it? At Teremark CIO, we see this as a technology leadership question as much as a technical one. Access spans IT, security, application owners, vendors, and business processes. Someone must set priorities and make those groups work from the same inventory.
The most useful starting point is not a new product purchase. It is an inventory of identities connected to your most important systems, followed by an examination of ownership, permissions, credential protection, activity monitoring, and the ability to revoke access without losing a critical business function.
What counts as an identity in cybersecurity?
A digital identity is an account or credential that a system recognizes and uses to decide what access to grant. A person may authenticate with a username and password. An application may authenticate with a token, certificate, API key, or cloud-assigned identity. Both are identities because both can be authorized to act.
Human identities include employees, executives, contractors, and vendor personnel. Non-human identities include service accounts, application connections, deployment pipelines, cloud workloads, bots, and AI agents. Devices can also have credentials that establish their identity. The distinction matters because a control designed for a person, such as a phone-based approval prompt, may not be appropriate for an automated workload.
Identity risk is not simply the number of accounts. It is the combination of access, exposure, and accountability. An unused account with administrator permissions is a concern. So is a production integration whose owner cannot explain how its key is stored or how to replace it during an incident.
The identities beyond your employee directory
Contractors and temporary workers
Contractors may need access to project files, development environments, financial applications, or customer systems. Their work often has a clear end date, but their access does not always end at the same time. A project manager may assume IT will remove an account, while IT may have no notice that the engagement finished.
Give each contractor a named internal sponsor and access tied to the work being performed. Make that sponsor responsible for confirming when access should change or end. Include contractor accounts in the same access reviews used for employees who perform similar work.
Vendors and managed service providers
A software provider may administer its application. A managed service provider may have remote access to infrastructure. A consultant may need access to financial reports. These arrangements are necessary in many businesses, but the vendor relationship itself is not a substitute for access controls.
Ask which named individuals can connect, which systems they can reach, whether accounts are shared, how access is authenticated, and how it will be revoked. A contract can define responsibilities, but technical settings determine what a vendor identity can actually do. Vendor selection and ongoing management should account for both. Our guide to standardizing technology vendor selection discusses how to make that review more consistent across organizations.
Service accounts and scheduled jobs
A service account lets software perform a task without a person signing in. It might run a backup, transfer a file, connect an application to a database, or collect monitoring data. Because the account operates in the background, an organization can lose track of its owner or the permissions it has accumulated.
The practical problem is dependency. Removing an account may break an important process, yet leaving an unknown account active can preserve an avoidable path into critical systems. Before changing it, identify the application, job, credential storage location, business owner, technical owner, and recovery procedure. Then reduce its access to what the task requires.
API keys and application integrations
An API key or token can let one application call another without involving a human user. Think of a customer platform sending information to a reporting system or a billing application connecting to a payment workflow. If a key is exposed in source code, a shared file, or a support ticket, anyone holding it may be able to exercise its permissions.
Treat keys as credentials, not configuration details. Assign an owner, restrict the systems and actions each key can access, keep it out of ordinary documents, and establish a way to replace it. Separating development and production credentials helps prevent a test integration from becoming a route into live data.
Cloud workloads and deployment pipelines
Cloud applications and deployment tools often receive permissions so they can read storage, publish code, access databases, or start infrastructure. A workload may need those rights to function, but broad permissions can turn a compromised application or pipeline into a route to other systems.
Review permissions by workload and purpose. The process that deploys an application does not automatically need the ability to change company-wide identity policies. A development workload should not reach production customer information simply because granting that access was expedient during setup.
AI agents and business automation
An AI agent or automated bot can be given access to documents, messages, applications, and workflows. Its risk depends on the authority it receives. An agent that summarizes tickets with read-only access presents a different exposure from one allowed to alter account details or initiate transactions.
Before connecting an agent to company systems, define its task, assign an accountable owner, limit its permissions, log its activity, and decide which actions need human approval. Identity governance belongs in AI planning, not as an afterthought once an agent is already operating. For a broader governance discussion, see who should own AI governance in a mid-market company.
How an identity becomes an attack path
An attacker may steal a credential, take over an active session, obtain an exposed key, or compromise a third party that already has access. The immediate danger depends on what the identity can do after authentication. Logging in is only the first step; reading sensitive records, changing permissions, transferring data, or interfering with backups is where access becomes a business event.
Consider a hypothetical integration that moves customer information between two applications. If its token can read far more than the required records and has no clear owner, an attacker who obtains it may be able to retrieve data through a legitimate application interface. The application may register authorized requests even though the person directing them is not authorized. That is why monitoring must consider behavior after access is granted, not just failed logins.
Another hypothetical example is a vendor administrator account retained after a project ends. If the vendor or account is compromised later, a former support route could still be usable. The remedy is not to stop working with vendors. It is to limit access, review it, and make revocation an explicit part of the relationship.
A five-part framework for governing every identity
We recommend treating identity security as a continuing cycle: discover, assign, constrain, observe, and revoke. Each part answers a different management question. A program that skips one can leave the others ineffective.
1. Discover what has access
Start with systems whose compromise would most affect customers, revenue, operations, or recovery. Review the identity provider, business applications, cloud platforms, vendor connections, service accounts, integrations, and automation used by those systems. Do not assume one central directory contains every identity or credential.
For each entry, record the identity type, what it accesses, its privilege level, how it authenticates, when it was last used, and whether it has an end date. The goal is a usable record that application owners and security leaders can check, not an inventory that becomes stale as soon as it is completed.
2. Assign a responsible owner
Every privileged account, vendor connection, service account, and application credential should have someone who can explain why it exists and approve changes. For important automated identities, name both a technical owner who understands how the integration works and a business owner who can judge whether the access is still needed.
Ownership should survive staff changes. If the only person who understands a service account leaves, access and operational continuity become harder to manage at the same time. Record the dependency and the procedure for changing its credential.
3. Constrain permissions and credentials
Apply least privilege: give an identity the access needed for a defined task, not broad access in case it might be useful later. Separate administrative duties where practical, especially for identity settings, financial approvals, production changes, and recovery systems. Revisit permissions when a vendor contract, employee role, or application workflow changes.
For human users, appropriate controls include strong authentication and careful management of privileged accounts. For applications, focus on protecting keys, tokens, and certificates, restricting their scope, and planning how to replace them. Avoid placing secrets in code, email, or ordinary shared documents. The control must fit the identity: an unattended service cannot respond to a human approval prompt, but its credential and permissions can still be managed.
4. Observe what identities do
A successful authentication event is not an all-clear. For critical identities, determine what normal activity looks like and what deserves investigation. That might include an unexpected privilege change, access to an unfamiliar system, a large data transfer, or a service account suddenly acting outside the application it supports.
Monitoring also needs an owner and a response path. An alert no one reviews is not meaningful protection. Decide who investigates, who can suspend access, and how business leaders will be informed if containment affects operations. This is one reason security tooling needs governance rather than continual accumulation; we address that problem in when too many security tools become a business risk.
5. Revoke access and rehearse recovery
Access should end when the work ends. Build that requirement into employee departures, contractor completions, vendor transitions, and application retirement. For a compromised API key or service account, revocation may interrupt an essential workflow, so the response plan must account for credential replacement and restoring the process safely.
Test the decision, not just the button. Who has authority to disable a vendor connection? How would your team identify every application using a particular credential? Which business process would stop, and how would it resume? An identity-focused scenario can strengthen a broader incident response tabletop exercise.
Best practices for CEOs, CIOs, and CISOs
Executive oversight works best when it asks for evidence about critical systems rather than a single claim that access is secure. You do not need to review individual API keys yourself. You do need a leader who can explain the scope of the problem, the highest-risk exceptions, and the plan for resolving them.
- Start with business consequences. Identify identities that can affect customer information, financial transactions, production systems, and backups before trying to review everything at once.
- Include outside parties in access reviews. Ask application owners to confirm that contractors and vendors still need the permissions assigned to them.
- Track unknown ownership as a risk. An account without an accountable owner needs investigation, particularly if it has elevated access or supports a critical process.
- Distinguish removal from containment. Disable obsolete access promptly, but plan carefully before changing a credential used by a live application.
- Make exceptions visible. If an account must retain broad privileges or a long-lived credential, document why, who approved it, and how it is monitored.
- Connect security changes to change management. Permission reductions and credential replacement should be tested so that improving security does not unexpectedly halt operations.
For banks and credit unions, that discipline also supports clearer conversations about technology risk, third-party access, incident response, and executive reporting. The exact systems differ by institution, but the leadership questions remain the same: which identities can reach critical functions, who oversees them, and what happens if one is misused?
What to ask at your next leadership meeting
A useful discussion should produce a prioritized work list, not a reassurance that a particular security product is installed. Ask your CIO, CISO, IT leader, and application owners:
- Which people, vendors, applications, and automated processes have privileged access to our most important systems?
- Which of those identities lack an owner or a current business purpose?
- What access remains after contractor projects and vendor engagements end?
- Where are critical application credentials stored, and who can change them?
- Can we tell when a service account or API integration behaves unexpectedly?
- Which access could we disable immediately, and which would interrupt operations?
- Who decides on containment, and when did we last rehearse that decision?
If the answers are fragmented across departments, appoint an executive owner to coordinate the inventory and risk decisions. Identity governance touches architecture, vendor management, cybersecurity operations, and continuity planning. Leaving it solely to the team that provisions employee accounts misses much of the exposure.
Where experienced security leadership fits
Teremark CIO provides fractional, interim, part-time, and full-time CISO leadership covering cybersecurity strategy, risk assessment, architecture review, incident response planning, monitoring, and executive reporting. Our CIO and CTO services can help connect access decisions to technology architecture, operational ownership, and vendor management. That combination matters when an identity problem crosses several systems and no single technical team owns the whole risk.
For organizations that need a broader starting point, the Teremark CIO360â„¢ IT Assessment reviews more than 300 factors across 14 IT leadership categories, including cybersecurity, risk management, operations, business continuity, and incident response. It produces an IT maturity scorecard and a roadmap for addressing gaps. Identity risk should be understood in that wider operating context: a credential is difficult to govern if ownership, architecture, and response responsibilities are unclear.
Frequently asked questions about identity security
Are non-human identities the same as service accounts?
No. A service account is one type of non-human identity. The category also includes application credentials, API keys, cloud workload identities, automation bots, deployment pipelines, and AI agents. Each can receive permissions and act without a person signing in for every action.
Does multifactor authentication protect API keys and service accounts?
The multifactor prompts commonly used for employees generally do not fit unattended application processes. Non-human identities need controls suited to automated use, including limited permissions, protected credentials, credential replacement processes, activity logging, and prompt revocation when compromise is suspected.
Which identities should a small business review first?
Begin with identities that can administer access, reach customer or financial information, change production systems, or affect backups. Include vendor accounts and application integrations connected to those systems. A focused review of consequential access is more useful than a large inventory with no remediation plan.
Who should own a vendor’s access?
Assign an internal business sponsor for the relationship and a technical owner for the connection. The sponsor confirms the work still requires access. The technical owner understands what systems the vendor can reach and how that access can be restricted or revoked. Security leadership should establish the standards and review exceptions.
What is the difference between identity governance and incident response?
Identity governance determines who or what should have access, under what conditions, and for how long. Incident response addresses what to do when that access may be compromised or misused. They depend on each other: containment is harder when no one knows who owns an account or what process it supports.
Can an AI agent have too much access even if it is working as designed?
Yes. An agent can perform its assigned task and still hold unnecessary permissions. Limit it to the information and actions its purpose requires, and require review before granting authority over sensitive records or consequential transactions. Reassess access when its workflow changes.
Protect the access that makes your business run
Employee accounts are only part of your identity attack surface. Contractors, vendors, service accounts, integrations, cloud workloads, and AI agents may all carry trusted access. The practical defense is to know what each identity can do, give it a clear owner, limit its permissions, watch for misuse, and be ready to withdraw access without losing control of operations.
If those answers are difficult to obtain, talk with Teremark CIO about experienced CIO and CISO leadership to bring the right people together, assess the exposure, and set a workable plan.