What is secrets sprawl and how does it impact NHIs

Secrets sprawl—the uncontrolled proliferation of credentials like API keys, passwords, and tokens—poses a growing risk to Non-Human Identities (NHIs) by increasing attack surface, undermining compliance, and creating operational inefficiencies. The article advocates a holistic NHI management strategy that includes automated discovery and classification, centralized secrets management, continuous monitoring, regular rotation and decommissioning of secrets, policy enforcement, automation and analytics, and cross-functional collaboration to reduce risk and strengthen organizational security posture.