We’ve normalized multi-factor authentication (MFA) for human users. In any secure environment, we expect login workflows to require more than just a password — something you know, something you have, and sometimes something you are. This layered approach is now foundational to protecting human identities.
But today, the majority of interactions in our infrastructure aren’t human-driven. They’re initiated by non-human entities — services, microservices, containerized workloads, serverless functions, background jobs, and AI agents. Despite this shift, most of these systems still authenticate using a single factor: a secret.