Principles such as Zero Trust and the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) are based on a core assumption: every digital identity must be uniquely identified, managed, and controlled. Although organizations have traditionally focused on human users, machine identities have now become central to modern security architecture. The main reason is that cloud services, APIs, microservices, containers, and AI agents have eliminated traditional network perimeters. Machines operating in this manner transcend the boundaries of traditional infrastructure and can no longer be effectively managed or restricted by conventional firewalls. However, the effective management of machine identities is a challenge, and certain common mistakes must be avoided. It is important to get the basics right. In most organizations, the protection of employee digital identity has reached a satisfactory level in recent years thanks to the widespread adoption of Multifactor Authentication (MFA) and passkeys. They have a mechanism that offers greater resistance to phishing attacks and is protected by cryptography. Ideally, a single IAM platform manages the digital identities of both employees and machines. In contrast, the registration and authentication procedures for machine identities operate on entirely different principles. In the modern era, individual identity is typically shaped by the surrounding infrastructure.
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