By mid-2026 non-human identities (service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens and AI-agent credentials) outnumber human identities by roughly an order of magnitude (Cloud Security Alliance: an average of 45 to 1, up to 144 to 1 in cloud-native environments) while most enterprises lack any documented policy to provision or retire them (78% per CSA), making NHI the fastest-growing unmanaged enterprise attack surface, and the binding first control is an inventory with owner and lifecycle, not additional perimeter security.
Anchored on three May 2026 datasets: CSA AI Safety Initiative whitepaper 'The Non-Human Identity Governance Vacuum' (20 May 2026 — 45:1 average / 144:1 cloud-native NHI-to-human ratio, 78% no policy to create/retire AI identities, 51% no clear ownership, 20% formal API-key offboarding); Sophos 'State of Identity Security 2026' (12 May 2026, n=5,000 across 17 countries — 71% suffered an identity breach in the past year, $1.64M mean recovery cost, weak NHI management a factor in 41% of incidents, CISO Ross McKerchar quote); Gartner 'Six Steps to Manage AI Agent Sprawl' press release (28 Apr 2026 — over 150,000 agents per average Fortune 500 firm by 2028 vs <15 in 2025, only 13% believe they have adequate agent governance, six-step sequence starting with governance policy then centralised inventory). VERIFIED 2026-06-05: CSA labs page, Sophos press release, Gartner newsroom press release (Gartner page 403s to crawlers; figures and URL confirmed via WebSearch returning the canonical newsroom URL verbatim). Distinct from CSA's earlier 26 Jan 2026 'State of NHI and AI Security' survey — the 45:1/78%/20%/51% figures are exclusively from the 20 May 2026 whitepaper. 90-day cadence. Triggers: (1) a later large-sample dataset showing the ratio or policy-gap figures compressing materially; (2) a standards or platform shift (e.g. broadly adopted workload-identity attestation) making lifecycle governance a default; (3) breach data showing perimeter controls, not inventory, separate affected from unaffected. Siblings: AM-167 (NHI procurement clause gap), AM-176 (Okta vs specialist NHI vendors), the agent-identity IAM architecture read.
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The claim: By mid-2026 non-human identities (service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens and AI-agent credentials) outnumber human identities by roughly an order of magnitude (Cloud Security Alliance: an average of 45 to 1, up to 144 to 1 in cloud-native environments) while most enterprises lack any documented policy to provision or retire them (78% per CSA), making NHI the fastest-growing unmanaged enterprise attack surface, and the binding first control is an inventory with owner and lifecycle, not additional perimeter security.
About this register
The Reporting register tracks claims published from articles addressed to senior enterprise IT leaders — CIOs, IT directors, heads of platform. Claims are reviewed on a 30–90 day cadence; each review either reaffirms the claim, marks one substantive part as Partial, or marks it Not holding once the underlying evidence has been overtaken.
Recent corrections in Reporting
- AM-008 · Partial · 17 Jun 2026
Source-text figure re-review: Google's 2024 Environmental Report reports a 28% year-over-year increase to 8.1 billion gallons, not the 33% (from a 6.1 billion 2023 base) asserted at publish. The 8.1B 2024 figure and the Microsoft WUE 0.30 L/kWh / 39%-improvement figure are unchanged and verified. Article corrected to 28% and the unsupported 6.1B base removed; the claim text retains the original figure with this correction per the Holding-up protocol.
- AM-132 · Partial · 10 Jun 2026
One of four legs unanchored on re-review. The claim text attributes '12% of deployments clearing 300%+ ROI with 88% at or below break-even at 12-18 months' to the Stanford DEL 2026 Enterprise AI Playbook. Full-text verification on 10 Jun 2026 found no such figure in that source: the playbook (Pereira, Graylin, Brynjolfsson, Apr 2026) studies 51 successful deployments by design and contains no ROI distribution, no 300%-plus cohort, and no break-even measurement point (full finding at AM-029, correction of 10 Jun 2026). The only verified figure carrying the same 12/88 numerals is IDC research with Lenovo (via CIO.com, Mar 2025): roughly 88% of AI proof-of-concepts never reach production and roughly 12% graduate — a pilot-to-production graduation metric, not an ROI distribution. The Gartner 28%, McKinsey 23%/17%, and MIT NANDA 95% legs verify; they support a small high-performing tail and a large struggling body, but none documents the two-peak bimodal shape the claim asserts. Status Up -> Partial.
- AM-129 · Partial · 10 Jun 2026
One of three read-against anchors unanchored on re-review. The claim text cites 'Stanford Digital Economy Lab Enterprise AI Playbook (12/88 bimodal ROI distribution at 12-18 months)' and frames the realistic ROI band around 'the highest-discipline 12% cohort'. Full-text verification on 10 Jun 2026 found the playbook contains no 12/88 distribution, no bimodal ROI shape, and no 12-18-month ROI measurement point (full finding at AM-029, correction of 10 Jun 2026). The claim's core negative finding — no mid-market enterprise has produced a documented +240% ROI in 90 days under audited conditions — is unaffected; the McKinsey State of AI 2025 and MIT NANDA legs verify and continue to support it. The '12% cohort' framing has no verifiable referent. The only verified figure carrying the 12/88 numerals is IDC's pilot-graduation finding (roughly 88% of AI proof-of-concepts never reach production; via CIO.com, Mar 2025), a different metric. Status Up -> Partial.
Reviews coming up in Reporting
- AM-063 · Holding · next +9d (27 Jun 2026)
AI agents executing financial transactions need a four-control bundle (action-approval gates by blast radius, kill-swit…
- AM-061 · Holding · next +9d (27 Jun 2026)
Production agentic-AI costs at scale routinely run multiples of POC projections, and a layered optimisation programme c…
- AM-003 · Partial · next +9d (27 Jun 2026)
GPT-5 Pro's tiered-subscription model forces enterprises to classify problems by computational difficulty — $200/month…