Anetac launches Human Link Pro to combat access risk with AI

Anetac has expanded its Identity Vulnerability Management Platform with the release of Human Link Pro, a new capability designed to unify management and security for both human and non-human identities within enterprise environments.

The expansion addresses the challenges posed by ongoing economic pressures, which have led to workforce reductions across multiple industries. These conditions have seen a rise in dormant identities, unmonitored non-human identities (NHIs), and abandoned accounts associated with contractors, suppliers, former employees, and third-party vendors.

Human Link Pro is now deployed globally across organisations operating in financial services, retail, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. Its functionality is aimed particularly at managing new human identity-based threats that, according to Anetac, are intensified by economic instability and frequent workforce changes.

The platform delivers real-time visibility into human identity access chains and is intended to reveal previously undetected privilege escalation paths and inheritance risks. Anetac states that Human Link Pro brings all identity types - whether employee, non-permanent staff, or NHIs such as workloads and service accounts - into a single view, streamlining vulnerability management that previously often required multiple, fragmented tools.

With Human Link Pro, Anetac extends its existing NHI management capabilities to human identities, introducing features such as behavioural anomaly detection, compromised credential identification, monitoring of joiner-mover-leaver (JML) gaps, unconstrained delegation checks, and identification of dormant or orphaned accounts. The technology leverages AI-powered real-time insights to monitor and manage the entire identity lifecycle.

The new offering comes as companies face market challenges exacerbated by workforce reductions, particularly affecting contractors, suppliers, and third-party vendors. As traditional JML processes face strain, organisations encounter more orphaned accounts, dormant access rights, and unchecked privilege escalation vulnerabilities.

Traditional tools often fall short in tracking complex chains of inherited permissions and gaps that allow for unauthorised access, privilege accrual, and dormant account exploitation. Anetac indicated that these shortcomings, along with limited visibility into third-party access, create further security risks susceptible to exploitation.

Examples cited by the company highlight the extent of the issue: in one retail organisation with over 30,000 employees, Anetac found more than 1,800 dormant human accounts and hundreds of personal external accounts, primarily related to seasonal staff. A global financial institution had not rotated some user passwords in over 15 years and maintained over 12,000 high-privilege accounts, some of which were dormant.

Within a large healthcare system, Anetac identified that 74% of user passwords exceeded 45 days in age, and 18% of users - many locum doctors and temporary staff - were dormant. In the case of a critical infrastructure operator with over 10,000 identities, more than 5% of accounts were found to have issues such as shared credentials and persistent third-party access, raising the likelihood of lateral movement attacks.

The company reported early benefits for Human Link Pro among initial users. A retail organisation with dozens of storefronts expanded its use of the Anetac platform to include Human Link Pro to improve visibility across Active Directory and Entra ID. This was particularly important for organisations dealing with a dynamic workforce and needing robust monitoring of JML workflows.

Jimmy Merlo, Vice President Client Services & Technology Advisory at NXGN.io, commented: "In fast-paced, distributed environments, identity hygiene breaks down quickly without continuous visibility. With Human Link Pro, organisations can finally close the loop on human access risks, especially in environments with high churn, complex vendor relationships and fragmented identity sources. It's a game changer for teams that have long struggled to track privilege shifts and inherited access across both human and machine identities."

The platform employs AI-driven models to detect and prioritise behaviour and privilege risks continuously across identity estates. This approach is positioned as aiding security teams in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in real time before they can be exploited by attackers.

Baber Amin, Anetac's Chief Product Officer, said: "Human accounts are one of the most exploited pathways in enterprise breaches, yet traditional security approaches fail to address the complex relationships between identities and resources. Human Link Pro addresses this critical gap by uncovering exploitable access chains, inherited permissions and privilege escalation paths specific to human identities. By embedding AI at the core of the platform, we're empowering organisations to proactively discover and eliminate real-world exploit paths - not just theoretical risks - before attackers can take advantage."

The added capability integrates into the Anetac platform's existing architecture, giving security teams unified visibility to detect vulnerabilities throughout their identity ecosystem. Human Link Pro is designed to be particularly useful in complex, hybrid environments and in industries where regulatory compliance is paramount, such as finance, healthcare, and government.

Discussing the importance of the new solution, Amin added: "Organisations struggle with privilege inheritance and escalation risks where unchecked access creates indirect chains for attackers to bypass security controls. Human Link Pro gives security teams the visibility and tools they need to identify these hidden vulnerabilities and take proactive steps to mitigate them before they can be exploited."

The platform's AI-powered Access Chains technology provides what Anetac describes as unprecedented visibility by revealing indirect access paths commonly overlooked by static tools. Human Link Pro is now available as an add-on for existing Anetac customers, operating with their existing environments to provide additional value without requiring platform changes.