Managed service providers are becoming an important line of defence against the non-human identity gap. BeyondTrust’s focus on the identities used by customers, infrastructure and automated processes reflects a broader change in privileged access management: service providers are now expected to govern machines operating across many tenants, clouds and operational teams.
Why the gap is difficult to manage
Human administrators are comparatively easy to identify and review. Machine identities are distributed across scripts, service accounts, applications, endpoints and cloud workloads. They may run continuously, use privileged permissions and lack a clear business owner. In an MSP environment, the same complexity is multiplied by customer-specific policies and delegated access arrangements.
The danger is not simply that a credential might be stolen. Unmanaged service identities can preserve access after a project ends, provide excessive permissions to operational tools or create hidden pathways between customer environments. A security incident involving one automation account can therefore have a much wider blast radius than its name suggests.
What MSPs need from PAM
First, privileged access management must discover machine identities as part of the normal onboarding process. Inventory should include where a credential is used, which systems depend on it, when it was last active and who owns the associated service.
Second, access should be issued just in time wherever possible. Short-lived credentials and brokered sessions reduce standing privilege and make it easier to revoke access when a customer relationship or task changes. Policies should distinguish routine monitoring from high-impact actions such as configuration changes or bulk data access.
Third, tenant separation needs to be visible in both enforcement and audit. Logs should identify the customer, operator, machine identity, requested task and resulting change. This evidence helps MSPs demonstrate control without relying on broad claims about privileged access.
Preparing for agentic operations
AI agents will increase the number of automated actions handled by service providers. Agentic Identity adds requirements for runtime authorisation, tool restrictions and explainable decision trails. An agent should not inherit the full power of the operator or service account simply because it is acting inside an approved workflow.
For MSPs and their customers, NHI security is becoming a service quality issue as well as a technical one. The strongest PAM programmes will combine machine discovery, least privilege, credential automation and continuous monitoring across every managed environment.