NHI Exposure Security Rating
The Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure Security Rating is a critical cybersecurity governance metric that quantifies an organization's vulnerability to threats from high-privilege machine identities. These identities—which include leaked API keys, service accounts, and system credentials—often operate with elevated permissions and are frequently invisible to traditional internal security tools.
What is an NHI Exposure Security Rating?
In modern cybersecurity, this rating serves as an objective measurement of how well an organization protects its automated "workforce". While human identities are protected by multi-factor authentication (MFA) and behavioral analytics, NHIs are often static and decentralized, making them a preferred target for attackers seeking initial access or lateral movement.
The rating typically follows a standardized A through F scale:
A (Best): Indicates a strong security posture with no detectable exposure of critical secrets or misconfigured cloud identities.
F (Worst): Signals immediate, critical risks, such as the presence of high-privilege administrative keys in public code repositories.
Core Components of the Rating Calculation
The rating is derived through continuous, unauthenticated discovery that assesses several distinct exposure vectors:
Sensitive Code Exposure: Detecting hardcoded secrets, such as AWS access keys or Stripe tokens, in public repositories like GitHub or GitLab.
Misconfigured Cloud Exposure: Identifying open cloud buckets or unsanctioned SaaS instances that leak authentication tokens.
Exposed Ports and Services: Finding active network services—such as SSH or RDP—that are accessible via service accounts with weak or no credentials.
NHI Email Exposure: Discovering role-based email addresses (e.g., devops@, system@) that act as "keys to the kingdom" and are often linked to sensitive management interfaces.
Why This Rating is Critical for Modern Defense
As organizations adopt cloud-native and DevOps-driven workflows, the number of machine identities often exceeds the number of human users by a ratio of 45:1 or more. This rating addresses several unique challenges:
Eliminating the "Hidden Tax on the SOC": By providing high-certainty data, it prevents security teams from wasting hours on manual searches for "unknown unknowns".
Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP): It assesses whether NHIs have excessive or unnecessary access that could lead to catastrophic breaches if compromised.
Compliance Mapping: It translates technical findings directly into regulatory mandates, such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR.
Legal-Grade Attribution: It uses multi-source data fusion to provide irrefutable evidence of risk, allowing CISOs to justify security investments to the boardroom with absolute certainty.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does this rating differ from a traditional vulnerability score?
Traditional scoring systems (such as CVSS) focus on software flaws. The NHI Exposure Security Rating focuses on identity risk—the validity and exposure of the credentials that allow those systems to communicate, which is often a more direct path to data exfiltration.
Can this rating detect "Shadow NHIs"?
Yes. Because the rating is achieved through unauthenticated external discovery, it can identify service accounts and API keys created by developers outside sanctioned IT processes and never registered in internal systems.
Is the rating a one-time assessment?
No. Because cloud environments and codebases change by the minute, the rating requires continuous monitoring. A secret pushed to a public repository today must be identified and reflected in the rating immediately to prevent exploitation.
ThreatNG serves as an all-in-one solution for external attack surface management (EASM), digital risk protection, and security ratings. It functions as a comprehensive platform for managing Non-Human Identity (NHI) exposure by transforming unmonitored external technical vulnerabilities into a high-fidelity intelligence shield. By providing purely external discovery and "Legal-Grade Attribution," ThreatNG enables organizations to secure their machine-to-machine authentication layer before adversaries exploit it.
Proactive External Discovery and Contextual Mapping
ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery to identify an organization's entire digital footprint without requiring internal agents or connectors. This "outside-in" perspective is critical for uncovering "shadow" NHIs—automated entities created by developers outside of sanctioned IT processes that are often invisible to internal security tools.
Shadow Asset Identification: ThreatNG scans the public internet to find subdomains, cloud environments, and code repositories that host active API endpoints or service accounts.
NHI Persona Discovery: The platform identifies high-value emails tied to automated roles such as admin@, devops@, svc@, docker@, or terraform@. These accounts are prime targets for credential harvesting or impersonation in automated workflows.
Detailed External Assessments and Risk Scoring
ThreatNG converts raw discovery findings into quantifiable security ratings (A-F), providing a clear metric for NHI exposure severity based on observed evidence.
Comprehensive Assessment Examples
NHI Exposure Security Rating: This metric assesses 11 distinct exposure vectors—including sensitive code, exposed ports, and misconfigured cloud assets—to measure risk posed by high-privilege machine identities.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG identifies "dangling DNS" states in which a CNAME record points to an inactive third-party service such as AWS, GitHub, or Shopify. An attacker could hijack such a subdomain and use its associated NHIs to launch authenticated attacks.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This assessment incorporates findings from compromised credentials and domain permutations to determine how easily an attacker could use an NHI to impersonate the brand.
Advanced Investigation Modules
ThreatNG uses targeted investigation modules to provide the deep forensic detail required to validate and remediate NHI leaks.
Sensitive Code and Cloud Exposure
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module discovers public repositories and scans them for leaked NHI credentials, including AWS Secret Access Keys, Stripe API keys, and RSA private keys. For example, if a developer accidentally pushes an OAuth token to a public GitHub Gist, ThreatNG identifies it immediately.
SaaSqwatch (Cloud/SaaS Exposure): Identifying both sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS implementations—such as Salesforce, Slack, or Snowflake—ensures that all third-party data handlers and their associated service accounts are known and secured.
Digital Presence and Sentiment Analysis
Social Media Investigation: This module monitors the "Conversational Attack Surface" on platforms like Reddit to identify threat actor plans or emerging campaigns that target specific NHI-related assets.
Username Exposure: ThreatNG scans over 1,000 sites—from TikTok to developer forums—to see if corporate usernames or service account aliases are active or available for impersonation.
Real-Time Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG’s DarCache repositories provide the global and historical context needed to prioritize remediation based on actual adversary behavior.
DarCache Rupture: This repository stores compromised emails and credentials from third-party breaches. If a service account email found during discovery matches a record in Rupture, the NHI is likely already compromised.
DarCache Dark Web: This module tracks mentions of an organization's high-value assets—such as specific API keys—on hidden forums and marketplaces.
DarCache Vulnerability: By integrating NVD, KEV, and EPSS data, ThreatNG identifies which technical vulnerabilities on the attack surface are actively being exploited in the wild.
Persistent Monitoring and Strategic Reporting
ThreatNG provides 24/7 oversight to ensure that the "outside-in" view of NHIs remains accurate as the attack surface evolves.
Executive and Technical Reporting: ThreatNG delivers prioritized reports that categorize findings into High, Medium, Low, and Informational risks, complete with reference links and remediation recommendations.
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping: The platform automatically translates technical findings into a strategic narrative of adversary behavior, allowing security leaders to justify NHI security investments with business context.
Cooperation with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG serves as a vital intelligence feeder, enhancing the effectiveness of other security investments through technical cooperation.
Secrets Management Platforms: When ThreatNG identifies a leaked credential externally, it can feed that alert to an internal secrets manager to automatically trigger a rotation or revocation of the compromised key.
Identity and Access Management (IAM): Discovery of a compromised service account or leaked NHI on the dark web allows IAM systems to mandate a password reset or adjust access levels proactively.
SIEM and SOAR Platforms: ThreatNG’s high-fidelity intelligence and "Legal-Grade Attribution" provide the irrefutable evidence required for SIEM systems to correlate external threats with internal activity and for SOAR platforms to execute automated response playbooks without manual intervention.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Tools: By feeding continuous, outside-in evidence into GRC tools, ThreatNG replaces slow, claims-based surveys with real-time technical data that ensures the organization meets its regulatory mandates for PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the advantage of using "unauthenticated discovery" for NHIs?
It provides the same view as a threat actor. This allows you to find "shadow" assets and leaked keys that internal tools might not be configured to see, providing a more authentic assessment of your external risk.
How does ThreatNG provide "Legal-Grade Attribution"?
ThreatNG uses the Context Engine™ to iteratively correlate technical findings with decisive legal, financial, and operational context. This eliminates guesswork and provides security leaders with the absolute certainty required to justify immediate remediation.
What is the DarChain?
DarChain is a capability that provides External Contextual Attack Path Intelligence. It correlates technical, social, and regulatory findings into a narrative map that reveals the exact sequence an attacker would follow—leveraging Web3 permutations and NHI exposures—to reach a "crown jewel" asset.
