MACHINE IDENTITIES 101

The number of human identities over the years has remained reasonably flat, whereas the number of machine identities has increased exponentially. We’ve now reached the point where machine identities outnumber human identities.

A first step for organizations in developing a strategy around managing machine identities is to agree on a definition. Gartner defines machine identities as separate from human identities (employees, partners, vendors, customers, consultants, etc.), and also groups machine identities into two subgroups:

• Devices – Mobile devices, IoT/OT devices, desktop computers, code signing, etc.
• Workloads – Containers, virtual machines, applications, services, etc.