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Machine & Workload Identity Use Cases
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Dark Matter Infrastructure
Most infrastructure today is run by machines. Pipelines deploy production. Jobs mutate cloud state. Agents orchestrate services and sync data between systems. But those machines authenticate with long-lived credentials—passed from pipelines, embedded in workflows, or inherited by agents—but operate without identity. There’s no session. No attribution. No enforcement. No audit trail. What you’re left with is infrastructure that behaves like dark matter: It exerts real force, but remains invisible to your security model.
This layer is made up of non-human identities (NHI) automated systems like CI jobs, service accounts, bots, daemons, and internal agents. They execute the most sensitive operations in your environment—and most still operate without identity governance of any kind.
The result? Over 24 million hardcoded secrets link have been exposed on GitHub alone. These are a symptom of an access model that’s broken, because the system that grants access was never built for the systems that now use it. When something breaks—when a token leaks, or a job mutates the wrong environment—there’s no way to prove who or what caused it, or why it was allowed.
Infrastructure Identity is about fixing that—by introducing identity that is instantiated at runtime, with attestation to the system that triggered it, and authorized only for what it’s meant to do—so teams can move faster without losing control.
Top Use Cases in Machine & Workload Identity
Here are some of the top ways in which companies are transforming their machine and and workload identity issuance, management, and governance with Machine & Workload Identity.
Secure CI/CD Pipelines
CI/CD Pipelines are Automated Superusers. Here's how to lock them down.
Infrastructure as Code
IaC Changed Infrastructure Speed. Here's how to reduce complexity and harden security.
Multi-Cloud Workloads
For Every Cloud has IAM. None of Them Agree. Here's how to create universal identity that travels.
Scaling Automation
Bringing identity to the scripts, jobs, and bots that run your infrastructure.
From Dark Matter to Infrastructure Identity
Every team described in this eBook started with the same problem: credentials scattered across systems, shared between jobs, and stretched across environments with no real control. Developers wrapped tokens in environment variables. Platform teams built vault integrations and manual workflows. Security teams scanned for leaks and tried to catch misuse after the fact.
This is credential sprawl: access issued in advance, used out of context, and impossible to govern at execution time. But the real problem isn’t just where credentials live—it’s that they exist at all.
From a batch script on a cron job to an AI agent calling an internal API, machine systems are now making decisions and executing tasks across your infrastructure. Some are simple. Others are emergent. But most operate with the same assumption: that access is a given, and identity isn’t required.
The Impact of Infrastructure Identity
Infrastructure Identity replaces that credentials-based model entirely. Instead of provisioning static credentials, systems receive cryptographic identity at runtime: verified against what they are, when they run, and what they’re authorized to do.
Infrastructure Identity transforms machine systems by turning every machine and workload action into something you can issue, govern, and trace in real time. Instead of provisioning access in advance and hoping it’s used correctly, Infrastructure Identity issues identity at the moment a system acts. That identity is:
Instantiated by the job, service, or agent that triggered the action
Authorized only for what it’s meant to do, and short-lived by design
Logged from execution to impact
Ephemeral, expiring automatically with no revocation or manual cleanup required
Here are some examples of what changes when identity replaces credentials:
| Challenge | Legacy Pattern | With Infrastructure Identity |
|---|---|---|
Shared tokens | Shared tokens injected into CI jobs | Identity issued per job, authorized only for its task, and short-lived by design |
Standing privileges | Persistent IAM roles for IaC jobs | Short-lived identity issued at runtime and tied to job execution |
Credential reuse | Credentials reused across cloud environments | Identity issued per workload, enforced across platforms |
Inherited access | Automation systems with inherited access | Cryptographic identity issued per task, authorized only for what it performs, and logged from execution to impact |
Infrastructure Identity brings real-time identity enforcement to the layer that executes infrastructure: jobs, bots, agents, and systems that act on your behalf across environments.
Dark Matter Infrastructure shaped your systems in the absence of identity.
Infrastructure Identity replaces it—with identity-based permissions, attribution, and control at execution.
- Security stops chasing secrets and starts enforcing policy at execution
- Platform teams stop stitching access paths together and start issuing identity per workload
- Automation becomes accountable, auditable, and authorized only for what it's meant to do
Get Started with Machine & Workload Identity
Start governing the machine layer
Introduce Infrastructure Identity in your CI/CD and IaC workflows
Issue cryptographic identity at runtime—without rewriting pipelines
Map your dark matter infrastructure
Identify which systems are acting without identity today
Inventory where credentials still drive automation
Replace credentials with runtime enforcement
Apply policy when jobs run—not just when access is approved
Authorize access in real time—by task, system, and trigger