Machine identities should have as much protection as human credentials, though most organizations lag far behind in shielding computers and devices from prying eyes, according to a recent study.

The study, conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Venafi, reports that, while 96% of IT executives said that machine identities should be protected, 80% said they have trouble delivering that protection.

And the issues aren't just with protecting data on the systems from hackers on the Dark Web; 61% of those responding said their biggest concern from poor machine identity protection comes from internal data theft.

According to the Forrester study, containers, virtual machines, and cloud computing have changed and expanded the definition of "machine," making enterprise security teams responsible for safeguarding the identity of many software identities in addition to hardware-based boxes.

Read here for more.