By 2030, the Non-Human Identity (NHI) Access Management market is expected to reach $18.71 billion with a CAGR of 11.9%. Simultaneously, Kubernetes, GitOps, and platform engineering are transforming machine and service account management into the main risk for DevOps teams.

While IT directors are discussing Kubernetes and platform engineering budgets, major cloud vendors are rapidly restructuring strategies around NHI access. According to MarketsandMarkets, by 2030, the Non-Human Identity Access Management segment will reach $18.71 billion, with key players including Microsoft, AWS, Google, Okta, Ping Identity, IBM, Oracle, CyberArk, Red Hat, Thales, and Entrust. This directly affects the architecture of DevOps pipelines, secret management, and Zero Trust in the cloud. For businesses in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the question is no longer whether to adopt these approaches, but how quickly to integrate them into existing cloud landscapes with minimal downtime.

The NHI Market and the Cloud: Why AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are in a Hurry

The Non-Human Identity (NHI) Access Management segment has moved from a niche security topic to a key area for major cloud providers. According to a recent MarketsandMarkets report, the NHI access market is expected to reach $18.71 billion by 2030, with an average annual growth rate of 11.9%. This means that the budget for protecting machine identities, service accounts, bot users, and CI/CD agents is growing faster than many traditional IT security items. For AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, this is a signal: without deep built-in NHI solutions, they risk losing corporate clients transitioning to Zero Trust and platform engineering.

The report names Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Okta, Ping Identity, IBM, Oracle, CyberArk, HashiCorp, Red Hat, Thales, Entrust, and Aembit as key players in the NHI market. Many of these companies already offer services that directly impact cloud DevOps practices: from secret managers and key managers to full-fledged machine identity management platforms. For example, AWS is developing IAM Roles, AWS KMS, and AWS Secrets Manager, Google Cloud is enhancing Workload Identity Federation and Secret Manager, and Microsoft is actively promoting Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) with support for managed identities for services.

It is particularly noteworthy that the largest market share, according to the researcher, is in North America, where enterprises are faster to adopt Kubernetes, service meshes, and GitOps. It is there that the demand for centralized management of non-human identities as part of platform engineering has already formed: platform teams want to provide developers with 'ready-made' secure pipelines and services, rather than forcing them to manually configure tokens and keys. Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz), which build and maintain cloud environments for clients, already include machine identity management in their mandatory architectural agenda.

The takeaway for businesses is simple: if you plan to scale clouds, automation, and microservices in the next 3-5 years, the NHI access strategy needs to be laid down now. Any migration to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud without a clear model for working with keys, tokens, and service accounts will lead to an increase in shadow secrets, manual configurations, and, consequently, incidents. In the context of tightening cybersecurity and compliance requirements, especially in fintech and telecom, this turns into a business risk with potential losses in the millions of dollars.

Kubernetes and DevOps: The Explosion of Non-Human Identities

Kubernetes and modern DevOps have dramatically increased the number of non-human identities in the infrastructure. Each pod, microservice, CI runner, GitOps agent, and service account in the cloud is a separate machine 'user' with its own permissions and secrets. On average, a company with 50-100 microservices can have 500 to 2000 such identities, considering different environments (dev, test, prod) and multiple clouds. Most of the permissions are assigned manually or on a 'wider to ensure it works' principle, which creates a lot of opportunities for abuse and compromise.

In Kubernetes, a common pattern is to use a service account with cluster-admin or elevated RBAC roles for CI/CD or operators. Combined with secrets in the form of base64 in Kubernetes resources, this becomes a weak link that attackers actively exploit. In response, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are promoting Workload Identity models: IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts) in AWS, Workload Identity in GCP, and managed identities for pods in Azure through integration with Entra ID. All three clouds are moving away from static keys to short-lived tokens tied to the workload context.

Modern DevOps practices are amplifying the trend. GitOps systems like Argo CD and Flux, as well as popular CI platforms, use tokens and keys to access cloud APIs, Git repositories, and container registries. Without centralized NHI management, it is difficult for DevOps teams to track which tokens are used where, when they expire, what permissions they have, and who created them. This directly affects MTTR and incident investigation times.

Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) are already restructuring standard architectural templates for Kubernetes clusters and CI/CD pipelines to a 'default without static secrets' model. In a typical project, this includes mandatory use of IRSA or equivalents, connection to Vault-like systems (including those based on HashiCorp Vault or cloud-native secret managers), and implementation of least privilege policies through Infrastructure as Code. For businesses, this means that launching even a small Kubernetes cluster today without an NHI architecture leads to expensive rework in 6-12 months.

Platform Engineering and Zero Trust: NHI as a New Layer of Security

Platform engineering is rapidly becoming the standard for medium and large IT teams: instead of dozens of disparate DevOps initiatives, a unified internal developer platform (IDP) is created. Gartner at its industry events, including the Supply Chain Conference 2026 on 'The Rise of the Orchestrated Enterprise', emphasizes that orchestration and standardization of platforms are the keys to scalability. In this model, NHI management becomes not just a part of security, but a fundamental layer of the platform.

Zero Trust assumes that no entity—neither a user nor a service—is considered trusted by default. For non-human identities, this means strict control over which services can access which data and APIs, based on policy rather than 'forever' keys. Solutions from CyberArk, HashiCorp, Okta, Thales, and major cloud providers already offer built-in mechanisms for automatic issuance, rotation, and revocation of secrets and certificates for services. For platform teams, this is a tool that can be 'packaged' into self-service templates for developers.

In practice, the platform team is increasingly responsible for creating standard CI/CD pipelines, microservice templates, and Kubernetes namespaces with a built-in secure NHI model. When creating a new service, a developer automatically receives a set of secure integrations: secrets are stored in a centralized repository, access is managed by policies, and service actions are visible through audit logs. This offloads DevOps and IT security, giving businesses a predictable model for scaling products.

Outsourcing companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) integrate NHI management and Zero Trust into their reference architectures for platform engineering. For example, in a typical IDP project for a medium-sized bank or fintech startup, the following are provided: a unified secret manager, mandatory integration with cloud IAM (AWS IAM, Azure Entra, Google IAM), microservice repository templates with ready-made Workload Identity settings, and monitoring of access attempts with unauthorized tokens. For regional businesses, this provides an opportunity to immediately build a platform according to global practices, bypassing the long and expensive 'trial and error' period.

Practice: How DevOps Teams on AWS, Azure, and GCP Should Restructure Access

For DevOps teams, the issue of NHI management is no longer theoretical: audit, cybersecurity, and compliance requirements are forcing a review of even already working pipelines. A typical action plan in the cloud starts with inventorying all non-human identities: service accounts, API keys, access keys, tokens for CI/CD, GitOps agents, and Kubernetes operators. At this stage, dozens of 'forgotten' keys that have not been rotated for years are often discovered, as well as service accounts with administrator-level permissions used for routine tasks.

After inventorying, the recommended step is to move as many integrations as possible to temporary tokens and role-based access. In AWS, this is IAM Roles and IRSA, in Azure—managed identities and RBAC roles, in Google Cloud—service accounts with limited roles and Workload Identity. DevOps teams working with Terraform, Pulumi, or Bicep move IAM configurations into code to eliminate configuration drift and manual 'temporary' permissions that are then forgotten to be removed.

A simple example of a secure practice in Kubernetes on AWS using IRSA instead of static keys:


apiVersion: v1

kind: ServiceAccount

metadata:

name: app-sa

namespace: prod

annotations:

eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn: "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/prod-app-role"

---

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

metadata:

name: app

namespace: prod

spec:

replicas: 3

selector:

matchLabels:

app: my-app

template:

metadata:

labels:

app: my-app

spec:

serviceAccountName: app-sa

containers:

- name: app

image: 123456789012.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/app:latest

Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) include NHI audit and access refactoring as a mandatory step in cloud migration and modernization projects. In real cases, this allows reducing the number of static secrets by 60-80 percent in 3-6 months and decreasing the time to investigate key-related incidents from weeks to hours, thanks to centralized logging and unified access policies. For businesses, this is not only about security but also about operational efficiency: less manual management, fewer accidents, and more predictable releases.

The Economics of NHI and DevOps: How Much Does Unprotected Access Cost?

The growth of the NHI access market to $18.71 billion by 2030 reflects not only the demand for products but also the real cost of errors in managing non-human identities. Incidents with secret leaks from repositories, CI/CD systems, and Kubernetes configurations already lead to direct losses in the millions of dollars: from regulatory fines to service downtime and customer churn. According to industry analysts, the average cost of a major cybersecurity incident for medium-sized companies exceeds $3-4 million, considering reputational damage and infrastructure recovery.

However, implementing centralized NHI management and restructuring DevOps practices pays off relatively quickly. In typical projects, the cost of building a secure access model in the cloud ranges from several tens to several hundred thousand dollars, depending on the scale and compliance requirements. But already in the first year, companies see a 30-50 percent reduction in manual secret management operations, a decrease in configuration error-related incidents, and faster audits due to transparency of permissions and access logs.

Platform engineering in this context acts as an economic multiplier: investing once in a platform with built-in NHI management, a company gets a standardized and scalable approach for all teams and products. Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) build modular platforms for clients where the NHI service becomes common for all clouds and environments: developers do not waste time inventing their own approach to keys and tokens, but use ready-made templates.

For businesses in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, it is now beneficial to enter the NHI management wave at an early stage. Regional companies have not yet accumulated the huge technical debt in DevOps and clouds that many Western enterprises have, which means they can immediately build an architecture considering NHI, Kubernetes, platform engineering, and Zero Trust. This reduces future refactoring costs and increases the investment attractiveness of the business due to a mature IT infrastructure that complies with the requirements of international partners and regulators.

Что это значит для Казахстана

For Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the trend of NHI management in the cloud is moving from a 'novelty' to a must-have requirement for large and growing companies. Against the backdrop of active digitalization of banks, fintech, e-commerce, and logistics, the region will face the same challenges in the next 3-5 years as enterprises in North America are currently experiencing: the growth of microservices, Kubernetes clusters, and multi-cloud leads to an explosive growth of non-human identities. For IT directors and security managers in Kazakhstan, this means the need to lay down NHI architecture in projects today to avoid spending 2-3 times more on error correction next year.

This is already noticeable in the market. Second-tier banks, large retailers, and telecom operators in Kazakhstan are actively adopting DevOps and Kubernetes, which means they are automatically creating hundreds and thousands of service accounts, tokens, and keys in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Without centralized NHI management, this turns into a 'gray zone' of security, where it is difficult to conduct an audit and prove compliance with international requirements to regulators. Companies like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) are already receiving requests from clients for NHI audits, secret manager implementation, and CI/CD restructuring with Zero Trust. For the regional business, this is a chance not to lag behind the global market but to integrate into global supply chains and partnerships, demonstrating a mature and secure cloud infrastructure.

By 2030, the global Non-Human Identity (NHI) Access Management market will reach $18.71 billion with a CAGR of 11.9 percent.

Managing non-human identities in the cloud is no longer a niche security task but a strategic element of DevOps and platform engineering. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and major players like Microsoft, CyberArk, HashiCorp, Okta, and Thales are already competing for a place in the NHI architecture of enterprise contours. For companies in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, now is the optimal moment to incorporate the NHI approach into projects on Kubernetes, GitOps, and cloud transformation while the scale is still manageable. Support from experienced integrators like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) allows this path to be taken faster and without critical errors, reducing risks and increasing the return on investment in the cloud.

Часто задаваемые вопросы

What is NHI in the cloud and DevOps, and why is it necessary for businesses?

NHI (Non-Human Identity) in the cloud and DevOps refers to the identities of services, applications, containers, bots, CI/CD agents, which access resources without human involvement. By 2030, the market for solutions to manage such access will reach $18.71 billion, reflecting the scale of the problem. For businesses, this is a tool for controlling service tokens, keys, and permissions, reducing the risk of leaks and attacks through compromised secrets. Implementing the NHI approach allows automating the issuance and rotation of secrets and embedding security directly into DevOps processes.

When do companies on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud need to implement NHI management?

NHI management becomes necessary already when transitioning to a microservices architecture and Kubernetes or when there are dozens of integrations through APIs. If you have more than 50-100 services, several environments (dev, test, prod), and at least one public cloud provider, delaying implementation is dangerous. In practice, many companies come to NHI projects 6-12 months after starting active cloud migration when the number of static keys and service accounts goes out of control. It is much more beneficial to lay down the NHI model right away than to spend 2-3 times more on access refactoring a year later.

What are the risks of not having NHI management in DevOps and Kubernetes?

The main risks are leaks of static keys and tokens from repositories, CI/CD configurations, and Kubernetes manifests, as well as elevated permissions of service accounts. This can lead to cloud infrastructure compromise, service downtime, and multi-million dollar losses, especially in the financial and telecom sectors. Without NHI management, companies lose visibility of which services have access to what and cannot quickly revoke compromised keys. In addition, it becomes more difficult to pass audits and prove compliance with international data security requirements.

How long does it take to implement an NHI architecture for the cloud and DevOps?

The implementation period for an NHI architecture depends on the scale of the infrastructure, the number of clouds, and the maturity of current processes. For a medium-sized company with one cloud and several dozen microservices, a pilot project takes 2-3 months, and full-scale implementation covering all environments and pipelines takes 6-9 months. In large organizations with multi-cloud and distributed teams, projects can stretch to 12-18 months, especially if integration with compliance and audit is required. Engaging cloud and DevOps specialists like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) can reduce this period by 20-30 percent due to ready-made templates and practices.

How to save on NHI implementation in the cloud and what solutions are best for businesses?

Savings are achieved through a phased approach: starting with inventorying all non-human identities and moving the most critical integrations to temporary tokens and role-based access. For small and medium-sized businesses, it is often sufficient to use built-in cloud tools—AWS IAM and Secrets Manager, Azure Entra and Key Vault, Google IAM and Secret Manager—supplemented with basic auditing. Large companies benefit from investing in centralized solutions from CyberArk, HashiCorp, Okta, Thales, and integrating them with platform engineering. Working with experienced partners like Alashed IT (it.alashed.kz) helps avoid unnecessary spending on unsuitable products and focus on truly critical components.

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