# What is a Service Account?

> A service account is a non-human account created so an application, operating-system service, script, agent, or automated process can authenticate and access resources.

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## Content

Like a human account, it usually has an identifier, one or more authentication mechanisms, and assigned permissions. Unlike a personal account, it represents a technical function and needs an accountable human or team owner.

Service accounts are often long-lived because software depends on them, which can lead to excessive privilege, forgotten credentials, and unclear ownership. Each account should have a defined purpose and consumers, unique credentials, least-privilege access, monitored use, and a tested process for renewal, rotation, suspension, and retirement. Interactive human use should normally be prohibited or tightly controlled and attributable.

### Key points

- **Inventory fields:** Owner, purpose, consuming workloads, permitted resources, privilege level, credential type, creation date, review date, and expected lifetime.
- **Protective controls:** Avoid shared credentials, prefer managed or short-lived authentication, restrict login paths, separate environments, monitor anomalies, and disable unused accounts promptly.
- **Operational concern:** Credential changes must reach every legitimate consumer without creating hidden copies or forcing teams to keep an old credential active indefinitely.
- **Important limitation:** Compromise gives an attacker the account’s effective permissions, often without the behavioral signals associated with a human user. Static, shared, or overprivileged accounts increase impact and weaken attribution.

### Related terms

[Non-human identity (NHI)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/non-human-identity/>) · [Least privilege](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/least-privilege/>) · [Secrets management](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/secrets-management/>)

### Sources

[NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3, Account and Identifier Management](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/171/r3/final) · [NIST SP 800-207A, Application and Service Identities](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/207/a/final) · [CISA/NSA Top Ten Cybersecurity Misconfigurations](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa23-278a)

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