Many organizations try to manage all non-human identities with the same tools. This overlooks differences in scale, rate of change, availability, the nature of what’s being identified, and more. It leads to a series of fragile solutions glued together that do not deliver on business goals.
The most obvious difference between these two is that machine identities are usually tied to long-lived physical devices. Workload identities, on the other hand, are often short-lived because they represent software entities that can scale up or down in real time. While there are many differences, the most important are:
Workload identities scale quickly with thousands of instances needing immediate availability, while machine identities change more gradually as physical devices are deployed or removed.
Workload identities are temporary and context-based, tied to software tasks, whereas machine identities are persistent and linked to physical hardware.
Workload identities need short-lived, dynamic credentials for scalability, while machine identities use long-term, hardware-linked credentials. Managing both similarly can lead to credential sprawl and inconsistent practices.
Unlike human or machine identities, workload identities also face unique challenges due to their interconnectivity. Workloads often require authenticated interactions across different services in different trust domains.
Workloads often interact across infrastructure boundaries or use third-party services, requiring federated trust management and token exchange.
Workloads come and go quickly, needing a naming system that supports easy-to-understand policies while handling high change rates.
The high volume and ephemeral nature of workload identities require a massively scalable approach, unlike the slower-moving credentials of machines.
With workload credentials often valid for only minutes or hours, issuance and management systems must be designed for exceptional fault tolerance, performance, and durability.
Represents software-based entities performing tasks in real time
Represents physical devices connected to the network
Ephemeral, context-dependent, tied to software processes
Persistent, device-dependent, tied to specific hardware
High volume, rapid, and dynamic
Lower volume, slower changes, typically managed as assets
Very high availability. Duration is often measured in minutes so every outage is potentially felt
Moderate availability. Duration is often measured in months or years. Outages may be missed entirely due to the infrequent nature of enrollment
Short-lived credentials, issued and refreshed dynamically
Long-term credentials, often device-bound or integrated into asset management
Automation and orchestration integration for scalability
Process or device management solution
Often requires cross-domain trust federation, multi-cloud and hybrid
Seldom need to authenticate cross-domain
Teams get to production faster with SPIRL with more confidence
They replace their legacy secret and service account management faster with out-of-the-box integrations
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