Definition
Non-human account used by applications, services, or scheduled tasks to authenticate to other systems. Common categories: database access accounts, integration accounts (SSO, federation), batch job accounts, monitoring agents. Typically have static credentials (passwords, API keys, certificates) requiring rotation.
- Application
- MidPoint: Service account is an account (digital identity in information system) related to a service.
SailPoint: Service Account — managed via Application Account schema; manual or correlated identity
Related terms
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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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Technical Account (TA)
Generic term for non-human accounts used for system-to-system communication — synonymous with service account in many co …
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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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Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
Authentication requiring two or more independent factors from different categories: knowledge (password), possession (ph …
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Secrets Management (SM)
Centralized lifecycle management of API keys, database passwords, certificates, OAuth client secrets, encryption keys, a …
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Secrets Vaulting
Sub-discipline of Secrets Management focused on cryptographically secure storage and retrieval of machine credentials. V …