Jacob’s post — est. reading time: 12 min

In today’s dynamic DevSecOps environments, the traditional understanding of identity management is under pressure. It is no longer sufficient to secure human logins and employee credentials alone. Modern digital infrastructure is populated with a growing array of non-human actors—microservices, automation scripts, CI/CD tools, containers, infrastructure-as-code modules—all of which require access to resources and systems. Each one represents a potential entry point. Each one demands its own identity.

Yet many organisations continue to treat identity and access management (IAM) as an administrative afterthought—an exercise in compliance rather than a frontline defence mechanism. The result is predictable: excessive entitlements, forgotten service accounts, hard-coded credentials, and sprawling permissions that are rarely reviewed, let alone revoked. While security teams focus on securing user logins, attackers are increasingly exploiting dormant or overly permissive machine identities hidden in plain sight.

The Hidden Risk Behind Machine Identities

Consider the real-world case of a global technology firm that fell victim to a serious breach. The root cause? A long-forgotten service account initially created for automated testing purposes. It had full access to production systems and had never been set to expire. Over time, it had become invisible to both development and security teams. An attacker discovered this dormant account and used it to navigate laterally across the network, extracting sensitive data over a period of weeks. While user access was strictly controlled, machine identities had multiplied unchecked—creating a shadow layer of risk.

This example is not unusual. As development accelerates and automation increases, service accounts and tokens are often spun up rapidly and discarded carelessly. Permissions are copied from existing users for convenience. Access keys are embedded in code repositories. These practices, though expedient, leave behind a trail of unsecured and unmonitored identities—digital dead weight that often escapes review until after a breach has occurred.

Why Static IAM Models No Longer Work

In cloud-native and DevSecOps-driven settings, environments are constantly changing. Resources are provisioned and torn down rapidly. Applications update multiple times a day. Code moves from development to staging to production in hours. Yet identity systems in many organisations are still rooted in manual approval processes and periodic reviews. These static models cannot keep up with the velocity of delivery or the complexity of cloud infrastructure.

The consequences are significant. Unchecked access rights violate the principle of least privilege, exposing systems to privilege escalation. Hard-coded credentials weaken audit trails and make threat detection difficult. Fragmented IAM tooling across development and security teams creates blind spots where no one has full visibility. The net effect is a system where the very tools designed to automate and accelerate delivery also automate and accelerate exposure.

Identity as a Frontline Security Control

For business and security leaders, identity can no longer be relegated to the back office. It must be seen as a critical layer of control—comparable in importance to network segmentation, encryption, or endpoint protection. Identity governs not just who logs in, but what code can execute, which services can communicate, and where data can flow.

To enable secure delivery at speed, organisations need an IAM strategy that is:

• Automated: Identity provisioning, permission assignment, and credential rotation must happen programmatically, not manually.
• Granular: Access should be defined by the minimum required privileges—specific to tasks, environments, and timeframes.
• Context-aware: Policies must reflect real-world context—such as environment, code lineage, risk level, or anomaly detection signals.
• Continuously validated: Permissions must be monitored and reviewed automatically, with real-time alerts for unusual behaviour.

This is not an aspiration. It is a necessity for any organisation operating at the speed of modern software delivery.

Embedding Identity Controls Into CI/CD Pipelines

One of the most effective ways to manage identity in DevSecOps environments is to shift it left—integrating identity validation directly into build and deployment pipelines. This means every infrastructure template, script, or container must be reviewed for how it handles credentials and what permissions it requests. Pipelines should automatically enforce identity policies, such as:

• Rejecting code that includes hard-coded secrets
• Blocking deployments that assign overly broad roles
• Flagging stale or unused service accounts for deactivation
• Ensuring credentials have defined lifespans and automated rotation

By embedding these checks early, security becomes proactive. Developers receive immediate feedback. Risk is reduced before it reaches production. And identity is treated not as an afterthought, but as an architectural concern from day one.

Reclaiming Control With Modern IAM Practices

To build resilience, organisations must adopt modern IAM approaches that span both human and machine identities. This includes:

• Role-based and attribute-based access control: Define permissions based on user roles or dynamic attributes (e.g. department, workload, time of day).
• Automated lifecycle management: Create, monitor, and retire identities as part of automated workflows tied to the software lifecycle.
• Credential hygiene enforcement: Detect and block the use of insecure authentication practices, including plaintext secrets and static tokens.
• Privileged access management for machines: Apply the same governance to service accounts as you do to administrator roles.
• Anomaly detection and response: Use behavioural analytics to flag abnormal identity usage and trigger automated investigation workflows.

These practices not only reduce risk—they streamline operations. When identities are governed as code, there is less room for ambiguity, misconfiguration, or oversight.

Why Leaders Must Prioritise Identity Strategy

Executives must view identity as strategic infrastructure. IAM is no longer just a technical domain—it affects delivery speed, compliance posture, customer trust, and incident response capability. A breach caused by a rogue script or dormant token is just as damaging as one caused by stolen user credentials—if not more so.

For CISOs and CTOs, the path forward involves aligning identity with DevSecOps principles: integrating controls early, enforcing policies automatically, and creating visibility across all actors in the system. For CEOs, the message is simpler still: if you cannot confidently account for every identity in your environment—human or machine—you are operating with a risk you cannot measure.

Final Reflection: Identity Is Code

In the modern software landscape, identity must be treated as code. It must be defined, versioned, tested, and deployed with the same rigour as applications and infrastructure. Only by doing so can organisations manage the explosion of digital actors securely and sustainably.

Because at the heart of every breach is a simple question: who did this? If your systems can’t answer that—quickly and clearly—it’s time to rethink how you manage identity in DevSecOps.