BeyondTrust’s explicit positioning around the non-human identity gap that MSSPs (managed security service providers) are being forced to manage represents a candid acknowledgement that privilege governance is no longer a human-only problem — and that service providers who’ve built their practices around traditional PAM are facing a fundamental challenge to their service delivery models.
The problem MSSPs face is architectural. A managed security services provider’s value proposition historically centred on managing security controls on behalf of customers who lacked in-house expertise. For privileged access management, that meant overseeing PAM platforms, managing credential vaults, and certifying administrator access. That service model assumes that privilege is something that humans ask for and that can be manually certified and revoked.
Machine identities, API credentials, and AI agents break that model. These non-human actors don’t wait for quarterly certifications — they provision themselves, escalate privileges as needed for task completion, and operate at machine speed. They can’t be manually reviewed by MSSPs in the same way human access is reviewed. An MSSP that’s still delivering privilege governance as a quarterly certification cycle and a credential vault is, in practical terms, delivering oversight over a shrinking fraction of the actual privileged identity population that clients are running.
BeyondTrust’s positioning targets exactly this gap. By framing non-human identity as a problem MSSPs “will have to manage,” the vendor is acknowledging both that the problem exists and that traditional PAM approaches are insufficient. This creates an opportunity for vendors who can offer continuous, automated governance of machine-driven privilege — which is precisely what customers need, but what traditional MSSP delivery models (manual reviews, quarterly certifications) cannot provide.
For organisations relying on MSSPs for privileged access governance, the takeaway is clear: verify that your service provider’s PAM programme covers not just administrator access, but the full scope of machine and AI agent privilege in your environment. If the MSSP’s privilege governance is structured around quarterly certification cycles and human-focused access reviews, they’re explicitly excluding the highest-velocity, fastest-growing segment of your privilege governance problem.
Source: MSSP Alert