Service accounts represent a significant blind spot in enterprise environments. These non-human accounts often have a large number of privileges and can become dangerous attack vectors if left ungoverned. In fact, OWASP Non-Human Identities Top 10 lists “Improper Offboarding” as the top NHI challenge, yet the top challenge selected by 32% of respondents in a Cloud Security Alliance survey is “managing service accounts”.
Today, we’re excited to announce that using Okta Identity Governance (OIG), customers can now extend governance capabilities to include service accounts managed in Okta Privileged Access (OPA), bringing the same rigorous oversight to non-human identities that organizations have historically applied to human identities.
Ungoverned service accounts: The hidden risk in your enterprise
Service accounts are critical to the operations of applications and systems, and are widely found in every enterprise environment. Unfortunately, they're also among the most sensitive and under-managed identities in any organization. Unlike human accounts with regular review cycles and clear ownership, service accounts lack owners, resulting in accounts that remain active long after they should have been deprovisioned or that accumulate excessive permissions over time. This results in an expanding attack surface that threat actors actively exploit.
Combine this with evolving regulatory frameworks that increasingly require organizations to demonstrate comprehensive access governance across all identity types, including non-human identities, and enterprises are now facing a key governance gap. With insufficient visibility into the inventory of service accounts and reliance on manual spreadsheets that are quickly outdated or fragmented systems, organizations are realizing too late that they cannot easily prove who has access to what service accounts, why they have it, and when each service account’s access was last certified.
Traditional privileged access management solutions have attempted to address this challenge, but typically lack robust governance capabilities or require complex, brittle integrations that are difficult to maintain and scale. Organizations need a unified approach that brings service account governance into the existing applications and processes they use for human identities - without adding operational overhead or requiring yet another security tool.
Bringing service accounts into your governance platform
Access Certifications for Service Accounts bridges OIG and OPA through a unified platform strategy, enabling organizations to govern non-human identities with the same rigor and ease as human identities without needing to integrate point solutions. Now, access certifications natively support the review and certification of access for both SaaS application service accounts and Okta service accounts, helping eliminate the governance blind spot that has plagued enterprises for years.
This seamless integration means security and compliance teams can create certification campaigns that include service accounts alongside human users, providing one platform that provides admins with a complete picture of access across the organization. Reviewers can easily identify stale credentials, excessive permissions, and orphaned accounts - then take immediate remediation action, all within a single, intuitive interface. By proactively identifying and removing unnecessary or excessive access held by service accounts, organizations can dramatically reduce their attack surface and the risk of account compromise.
Here’s how it works in action:
Key capabilities shown:
- Create a service account and add users
- Run a campaign on the service account
- Show service account certification campaign
Why this changes the game for identity governance
- Enhanced security and governance: Service accounts are often sensitive and under-managed identities in an organization. By proactively identifying and removing stale, unnecessary, or excessive access held by service accounts, customers can reduce the attack surface area and the risk of account compromise.
- True unified platform: Unlike point solutions that require complex custom integrations, this capability is natively built across OIG and OPA, providing seamless governance without additional tools or custom code and increasing operational efficiency
- Simplified compliance: Streamline audit preparation with comprehensive access reviews that cover both human and non-human identities, minimizing manual processes and reducing the compliance burden
The future of privileged access governance starts today
With Access Certifications for Service Accounts, you can finally close a critical governance gap, simplify compliance, and facilitate easy management of all your identities from a single, powerful platform. This feature is available now in Early Access globally for customers with both Okta Identity Governance and Okta Privileged Access.
Already an Okta Identity Governance (OIG) and an Okta Privileged Access (OPA) customer? To get started, simply open a support ticket to verify your eligibility and begin enforcing governance controls across your entire identity ecosystem.
New to Okta Identity Governance? Connect with one of our specialists to see how to use the power of Okta Identity Governance and Okta Privileged Access to help you manage both human and non-human identities.
Next Up in the Series:
Bridging the Gap: Simplifying Governance for On-prem Applications
These materials are intended for general informational purposes only and are not intended to be legal, privacy, security, compliance, or business advice. © Okta, Inc. and its affiliates 2026.
