---
title: "Non-human identity (NHI) · Highflame Glossary"
description: "Identities belonging to machines, services, and agents rather than people. Agents are the fastest-growing and least-governed class of NHI."
doc_version: "0.1.0"
last_updated: "2026-07-25T03:14:58.002Z"
canonical: "https://www.highflame.com/glossary/nhi"
---

[Home](/index.md)·[Glossary](/glossary.md)·Non-human identity (NHI)

# Non-human identity (NHI)

Identities belonging to machines, services, and agents rather than people. Agents are the fastest-growing and least-governed class of NHI.

Learn more: [Agent Identity](/learn/ai-agent-identity.md)

Part of [the Agent Control Fabric](/platform.md): Highflame's identity, policy, and enforcement substrate for AI agents.

[Book a demo](/contact.md) [All terms](/glossary.md)

## Keep exploring the glossary.

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### On-behalf-of (OBO) chain

The unbroken provenance recorded on a credential (who authorized the action, what scope was granted, and how deep the delegation goes) so an audit walks back to a human.

Read →](/glossary/obo-chain.md)[

### Prompt injection

An attack that manipulates an agent through crafted input (in a prompt, a tool result, or retrieved content) to make it act against policy.

Read →](/glossary/prompt-injection.md)[

### Red teaming

Continuous adversarial testing of AI systems (jailbreaks, extraction, manipulation) with findings turned into enforcement policy and re-scanned to prove the fix.

Read →](/glossary/red-teaming.md)[

### RFC 8693 (token exchange)

The standard that lets one token be exchanged for another with attenuated scope: the basis for verifiable agent-to-agent delegation.

Read →](/glossary/rfc-8693.md)[

### Scope attenuation

Narrowing permissions at each delegation hop so a sub-agent can never hold more authority than the agent that delegated to it.

Read →](/glossary/scope-attenuation.md)[

### Shadow agents

Agents running across clouds, IDEs, and SaaS that no one inventoried or assigned an owner: the unmanaged majority of an enterprise's agent footprint.

Read →](/glossary/shadow-agents.md)

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