Term · 32. Workload Identity & Cloud-native
Ephemeral Identity
Definition
Workload or AI agent identity with very short lifetime — created on-demand for a specific task or session, destroyed when task completes. Reduces persistent attack surface. Aligned with NHI best practices and AI agent identity patterns.
- Synonyms
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- Short-lived Identity
- Time-bound Identity
- Application
- Regulatory: Gartner Magic Quadrant / Hype Cycle · NIST SP 800-63 (Digital Identity Guidelines)
- Standards & regulations
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- Gartner
- NIST
Related terms
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Ephemeral Credentials
Credentials with very short lifetime (minutes) issued just-in-time and revoked after use. Replaces long-lived secrets in …
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Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)
Discovery, analysis, and remediation of permissions held by identities (human + non-human) across cloud infrastructure p …
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Non-Human Identity (NHI)
Identities for service accounts, API keys, OAuth client secrets, machine certificates, workload identities (AWS IAM role …
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OIDC for Cloud (Workload OIDC)
Pattern using OIDC tokens issued by cloud platforms (AWS IRSA, Azure Workload Identity, GCP Workload Identity Federation …
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Passwordless Authentication
Authentication without passwords, using phishing-resistant factors: FIDO2 passkeys, hardware tokens, biometric authentic …
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Adaptive MFA
Authentication mechanism that adjusts MFA challenges based on real-time risk signals — device trust, location, behavior, …