Glossary
What is non-human identity?
Non-human identity, or NHI, refers to the credentials and machine identities under which non-human actors (agents, services, scripts, automation) act on systems.
§ 01 Definition
Two complementary disciplines.
NHI management is a discipline in its own right: discovery, rotation, scoping, lifecycle, secret hygiene. Specialist platforms exist to do that work.
Audit trail of what NHI did is a different problem. The two disciplines are complementary, not substitutable.
§ 02 Questions
Non-human identity, answered.
How does NHI management differ from agent audit trail?
Agent audit trail governs the action lifecycle: what was done under the credential, against which policy, with what outcome. NHI management answers who holds the keys; the audit trail answers what they did with the keys.
Does Subnet345 manage non-human identities?
No. Subnet345's substrate consumes the NHI as the identifier of the agent acting and produces the durable, attributable, tamper-evident audit trail of what that agent did.
Which regulatory frames touch NHI and agent audit trail?
Frames that expect attribution touch both. NERC CIP's electronic access controls are NHI-adjacent; its documentation expectations are audit-trail-adjacent. The EU AI Act and DORA presuppose an attributable record of agent actions, which presumes a stable identifier for the agent.
§ 03 Related
Where the term lives.
Regulatory frames