Machine identities: The invisible cyber risk you probably aren’t managing

How non-human accounts are reshaping cybersecurity risks in manufacturing and industrial Networks

Takeaways

• Machine identities are non-human accounts that systems, applications and devices use to authenticate and communicate.
• They now outnumber human identities by a wide margin and are far harder to track and govern.
• Poorly managed machine identities increase the risk of breaches, downtime and supply‑chain attacks.
• Manufacturing and industrial environments are especially exposed due to connected equipment, legacy systems and vendor integrations.
• Small IT teams can reduce risk with basic visibility, lifecycle management and monitoring.

What are machine identities?

When we talk about identity in cybersecurity, most people think about users logging in. But modern IT environments rely on a far larger and less visible population of non‑human identities.

Machine identities are the credentials that applications, scripts, APIs, cloud workloads, industrial devices, and automation tools use to authenticate. They include service accounts, API keys, certificates, tokens, and embedded credentials that let systems communicate automatically and continuously.

In manufacturing, this might include production systems pulling data from ERP software, industrial controllers updating configurations, remote monitoring tools, or third‑party vendors accessing plant networks. These identities are essential for efficiency and uptime, but they also introduce risk.

Why machine identities are a growing cybersecurity problem

The challenge isn’t that machine identities exist. It’s that most organizations, especially those with limited IT resources, don’t have clear visibility or ownership over them.

Machine identities now vastly outnumber human users, and many are created automatically as cloud and industrial environments scale. Unlike people, machines can’t use MFA, credentials often aren’t rotated, and service accounts may run over-privileged “just in case.”

Common risks include:

• Hard‑coded or long‑lived credentials embedded in scripts or systems
• Over‑permissioned service accounts that violate least‑privilege principles
• Orphaned identities that remain active long after systems change
• Minimal monitoring of machine behavior because activity looks “normal”

Attackers have noticed these risks. Machine identities are increasingly targeted because they provide quiet, persistent access without triggering the alarms designed for human users.

Machine identities and supply‑chain risk

Machine identity risk and supply‑chain attacks are closely linked — especially in manufacturing.

Industrial environments depend heavily on third‑party software, managed service providers, system integrators, and equipment vendors. Each relationship often comes with its own credentials, service accounts or API access. If one supplier is compromised, attackers may inherit access downstream.

Manufacturing‑focused research highlights that machine identities tied to APIs, certificates and automation tools are among the most attractive targets for attackers because breaching them can lead to outages, data exposure or operational disruption.

Practical ways small IT teams can reduce risk

You don’t need an enterprise IAM overhaul to make progress. For small teams, a few basics go a long way:

1. Get visibility first
   Inventory service accounts, APIs and certificates. If you don’t know what exists, you can’t secure it.
2. Reduce privileges
   Limit machine identities to only the access they actually need, especially in production and OT-adjacent systems.
3. Rotate and expire credentials
   Eliminate hard‑coded and long‑lived secrets where possible, and set ownership for each identity.
4. Monitor behavior, not just logins
   Unexpected system‑to‑system activity can be an early indicator of compromise.
5. Treat vendors as identity risk
   Review what machine access third parties have, and disable what’s no longer required.

These steps won’t eliminate risk, but they will dramatically reduce the chance that a quiet machine identity becomes your next entry point.

Barracuda can help

For SMBs and manufacturers with limited resources, security tools that improve visibility and monitoring across identity‑driven activity can help close gaps without adding operational burden. The BarracudaONE cybersecurity and resilience platform is designed to support lean IT teams by improving visibility, detection and response across modern, connected environments to build resilience, even as machine identities continue to grow.

Barracuda SecureEdge reduces exposure with consistent, policy-based access and segmentation across users, sites and cloud resources, while Barracuda Managed XDR continuously detects and responds to suspicious machine-account activity that can signal compromised keys, tokens or certificates.