Top Non-Human Identity Tools for Agents
Six NHI and agent-identity tools. Service accounts were the old problem. Agents are the new one.
In August 2025, UNC6395 used stolen Salesloft Drift OAuth tokens to export Salesforce objects. No password prompt. The connected app was the login. Google’s threat intelligence write-up is the incident.
Vault is a store. A long-lived key in git is secrets management. This shortlist is for identities with no human owner, including agents.
How we evaluated
We read first-party docs, source, licenses, and release notes, and we treat a marketing page as a claim, not as proof two products do the same work. We cared about whether the product inventories NHIs you already issued or attests new ones, whether it lives on SaaS tokens or workload identity, whether a human owner is in the data model, and whether the SKU is still sold after Cisco, SailPoint, and Cyera.
| Tool | Best for | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Astrix Security | The NHI inventory Cisco now owns | Commercial · Cisco · new licenses ended 30 Jun 2026 |
| Oasis Security | Agentic access management on SaaS and cloud NHIs | Commercial · Cyera deal · inventory + AAM |
| Entro Security | Secrets lineage plus NHI detection, now in SailPoint | Commercial · SailPoint · NHIDR + secrets |
| Token Security | A standalone AI-agent identity graph | Commercial · still independent · discovery |
| Aembit | Issuing secretless access for workloads and agents | Commercial · free tier · issue and attest |
| SPIFFE / SPIRE | Attested workload identity you operate | Apache-2.0 · CNCF graduate · you run SPIRE |
Astrix Security
Best for the NHI inventory Cisco now owns
Astrix built the Discover, Secure, Deploy loop for AI agents and NHIs: inventory of agents, MCP servers, service accounts, OAuth apps, API keys, and secrets, then posture, then an Agent Control Plane that issues short-lived, scoped credentials.
Cisco completed the acquisition on 29 June 2026. The site says standalone sales of new licenses ended 30 June 2026. Existing customers keep support. New buyers are buying a Cisco roadmap item.
Key features:
- Agentless, API-based discovery of AI agents, MCP servers, and NHIs
- Identity graph with owners, permissions, tokens, and connected resources
- Agent access policy: allow, flag, or block before the action runs
- Agent Control Plane: just-in-time, short-lived credentials at deploy
Why we like it:
This is the product that made NHI a buying category. Discovery plus a control plane is still the shape of the job, even if the invoice now says Cisco.
Limits:
New standalone licenses ended 30 June 2026. No public list price. Integration into Cisco Identity Intelligence, Secure Access, Duo, and Splunk is promised, not a SKU we could open.
License or pricing: Commercial. New licenses ended 30 June 2026.
Oasis Security
Best for agentic access management on SaaS and cloud NHIs
Oasis sells an NHI Security Cloud plus Agentic Access Management. Inventory, ownership, context, posture, time-bound access, lifecycle, and rotation sit on the same product page.
Cyera agreed to acquire Oasis in July 2026. oasis.security is still the product site. Treat the brand as in motion, the inventory job as live.
Key features:
- Real-time inventory of NHIs across IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and on-prem
- Ownership, context, and AI-SPM for agent configs and permissions
- Agentic intent and time-bound access, not only static roles
- Lifecycle, remediation, threat detection, and secret rotation
Why we like it:
When the question is who owns this Salesforce connected app and what the agent is allowed to do next, Oasis documents both the map and the policy.
Limits:
Commercial, sales-quoted. No public list price. The Cyera close is a procurement fact, not a feature.
License or pricing: Commercial. No public list price.
Entro Security
Best for secrets lineage plus NHI detection, now in SailPoint
Entro treats the secret and the identity as one object. Discovery across cloud, code, CI/CD, and collaboration tools, then ownership, idle secrets, lineage, and NHIDR for behavior.
SailPoint completed the acquisition on 29 June 2026 and says Entro remains available as a standalone offering while Agentic Fabric integration continues. Their H1 2025 report put cloud-native NHIs at 144 to 1.
Key features:
- Discovery of NHIs, secrets, and agentic deployments
- Secrets scanning mapped to source, owner, and risk
- Ownership attribution and idle or orphaned secret flags
- NHIDR for anomalous NHI and agent behavior
Why we like it:
A token without lineage is a finding you cannot fix. Entro’s public pages put the human owner on the secret, which is the remediation that actually ships.
Limits:
Entro maps secrets to owners. Vault and SPIFFE are different jobs. SailPoint is the buyer of record. No public list price.
License or pricing: Commercial. Standalone to SailPoint customers, per SailPoint’s close note.
Token Security
Best for a standalone AI-agent identity graph
Token Security still sells as Token. Discovery of AI agents and NHIs, ownership, least-privilege right-sizing, an identity graph, and ITDR. Their MCP server is a query interface into that graph, not a gateway product.
On a list where three neighbors just got acquired, an independent NHI platform is the procurement fact, not a vibe.
Key features:
- Continuous discovery of AI agents and NHIs across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem
- Named human owner and decommissioning of orphaned identities
- Identity graph correlating agents, humans, secrets, permissions, and data
- Intent-aware least privilege and identity threat detection
Why we like it:
When you need the graph and you are not ready to become a Cisco, SailPoint, or Cyera shop, this is the remaining specialist.
Limits:
Commercial. The first-party site has no price list. AWS Marketplace lists a 12-month NHI starter package at $50,000 and an advanced package at $100,000. That is a marketplace listing, not a first-party catalog.
License or pricing: Commercial. No first-party list price.
Aembit
Best for issuing secretless access for workloads and agents
Aembit is workload and agent IAM. Trust providers attest the client. Policy decides. Short-lived credentials are injected. Docs list OAuth, OIDC, SPIFFE, and Kerberos. The point is access, not another inventory of keys you already lost.
Their MCP Identity Gateway is how they enforce agent-to-tool calls. Stay here for the identity broker.
Key features:
- Secretless, just-in-time credentials for workloads and AI agents
- Blended identity: human IdP context plus the agent
- Access policies, trust providers, and credential providers
- Public free tier: 10 workloads or 3 AI agents
Why we like it:
Discovery tells you the standing token exists. Aembit is the product that stops minting the next one.
Limits:
You still need an inventory of the SaaS OAuth apps nobody registered. Aembit does not replace Astrix-class discovery. Conditional access is on Enterprise.
License or pricing: Commercial. Starter free. Teams $20 per workload or per agent per month. Enterprise custom. Source: aembit.io/pricing.
SPIFFE / SPIRE
Best for attested workload identity you operate
SPIFFE is the spec. SPIRE is the runtime. Workloads get short-lived SVIDs, X.509 or JWT, from a Workload API after node and workload attestation. CNCF graduate. Apache-2.0 on the SPIRE repo.
SPIFFE is not a SaaS OAuth inventory. It issues identity for software you run. There is no SPIRE server on someone else’s chatbot.
Key features:
- SPIFFE IDs and short-lived SVIDs (X.509 and JWT)
- SPIRE attestation, Workload API, and automatic rotation
- Federation across trust domains
- Integrations the spec lists: Envoy, Istio, Kubernetes, VMs
Why we like it:
When the agent runs in your cluster, this is the identity document. You can read the spec. You can run the server.
Limits:
You operate SPIRE. It does not discover a forgotten Slack bot token. Aembit can consume SPIFFE. The four SaaS NHI products do not replace it.
License or pricing: Apache-2.0. You run it.
How to choose a non-human identity tool
Four questions before the quote. Names below are tools, not a scored bake-off.
| Critical question | Why it matters | What to evaluate | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Are we buying an inventory of NHIs we already issued, or a control plane that issues new ones? | Discovery and attestation are different jobs. | Oasis, Entro, Token, and Astrix inventory. Aembit and SPIFFE issue. | A dashboard that cannot mint or revoke. |
| Who invoices us after Cisco, SailPoint, and Cyera? | Three of six names changed owner in 2026. | Astrix inside Cisco. Entro inside SailPoint. Oasis in a Cyera deal. Token still independent. | A quote for a brand that no longer sells. |
| Can we revoke the agent tomorrow, and does a human own it? | Drift was a connected app with a token nobody rotated. | Oasis and Token document ownership. Aembit documents a kill switch. SPIRE rotates SVIDs. | No owner, no expiry. |
| Do we operate the issuer? | Uptime is part of the license. | SPIRE you run. Aembit is SaaS with a free tier. The NHI inventories are SaaS. | A SPIRE install with no on-call. |
What the internet thinks about non-human identity
NHI threads still argue the name. Practitioners already had service accounts. The new failure is an OAuth app or an agent with no owner and no expiry.
Inventory the OAuth apps you already have. Issue short-lived identity for the agents you are about to run. Do not wait for a seventh vault.
FAQs
Is Astrix still something I can buy?
Not as a new standalone license. Cisco completed the acquisition on 29 June 2026. Astrix’s own site says new-license sales ended 30 June 2026. Existing customers keep support under current agreements. Ask Cisco what ships in Identity Intelligence this quarter.
Is SPIFFE a secrets manager?
No. SPIFFE issues short-lived identity documents to workloads. SPIRE is the runtime that attests and rotates them. A vault stores secrets. Open the secrets management list for that job.
Do these tools replace HashiCorp Vault?
No. Vault is a store. Several products here read vaults or issue credentials so you store fewer long-lived keys. They do not replace a secrets manager, and this list does not score one.
Is this a scored bake-off?
No. Order is editorial.
