Source: securityboulevard.com – Author: Eric Olden
AI agents have crossed a threshold. They’re no longer just tools waiting for instructions. They reason, plan, act, and collaborate autonomously—often across systems and domains, without direct human oversight. Gartner predicts that by 2026, nearly a third of enterprises will deploy AI agents that execute workflows and decisions independently at machine speed.
But there’s a problem: our identity and access management (IAM) systems weren’t designed for this. The result? AI agents today operate in a security blind spot—trusted to act but not treated as first-class identities. That gap is dangerous.
Let’s break down the real identity challenges enterprises face when AI agents aren’t given the rigorous management they require.
The Problems We Must Solve for AI Agents
Agents lack distinct, managed identities
Most identity systems still treat AI agents as generic apps or background processes—not as discrete digital actors. This makes it impossible to:
- Apply specific security policies to individual agents.
- Differentiate agent-initiated actions from those of users or systems.
- Build clear chains of accountability.
Without distinct identities, agents become invisible to governance controls.
No precise permissioning for agents
Today’s agents often inherit access rights from the user or system that spawned them—rights that are:
- Too broad for the agent’s actual purpose.
- Difficult to limit without breaking functionality.
This over-permissioning creates unnecessary risk and violates Zero Trust principles.
Action tracing and audit gaps
Current systems struggle to provide:
- Clear visibility into who (or what) took action: Was it the human? The agent? Another agent in a delegation chain?
- Reliable, tamper-proof audit trails that map complex, multi-agent interactions.
Without this, compliance reporting, incident response, and accountability fall apart.
No dynamic delegation or trust chains
AI agents often:
- Need to request additional permissions at runtime as they encounter new tasks.
- Must securely delegate parts of their workflows to other agents.
Traditional IAM assumes static permissions and manual setup—not the flexible, just-in-time trust relationships agents require.
This limits the scale and autonomy of agent ecosystems.
Lack of fine-grained access controls
Many access models grant rights at a broad app or API level. For AI agents:
- This violates the least-privilege model.
- It increases the potential blast radius if an agent is compromised or misbehaves.
Agents need permissions tailored to specific tasks, data, and timeframes—not one-size-fits-all access.
The Cost of Inaction
If enterprises don’t address these gaps:
- Security risks will multiply: Over-permissioned, untraceable agents will become prime targets for attackers and a source of internal failures.
- Compliance will suffer: Without clear, auditable identities and actions, regulatory obligations can’t be met.
- Innovation will stall: Fear of risk will cause organizations to clamp down on agent adoption rather than enabling it safely.
The Path Forward
The future of AI is built on networks of autonomous agents that act with speed and intelligence. But they need identity systems designed for their world:
- Distinct, first-class identities for every agent
- Granular, purpose-bound permissions
- Transparent, auditable action chains
- Support for dynamic delegation and cross-domain trust
The time to act is now. Let’s build identity that’s ready for the agentic era—before the risks build faster than we can control them. Strata’s Maverics Agentic Identity is purpose-built to close these gaps—treating agents as first-class digital citizens, enabling Zero Trust at machine speed, and setting a foundation for secure, scalable agent ecosystems.
Read the next blog post in the series to learn more: 
Why AI Agents Deserve First-Class Identity Management.
Ready to test-drive the future of identity for AI agents?
Join the Maverics Identity for Agentic AI and help shape what’s next.
The post Agents Are People Too: The Identity Gaps That Put AI Agents—and Enterprises—at Risk appeared first on Strata.io.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Strata.io authored by Eric Olden. Read the original post at: https://www.strata.io/blog/agentic-identity/agents-are-people-too-7a/
Original Post URL: https://securityboulevard.com/2025/06/agents-are-people-too-the-identity-gaps-that-put-ai-agents-and-enterprises-at-risk/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=agents-are-people-too-the-identity-gaps-that-put-ai-agents-and-enterprises-at-risk
Category & Tags: Security Bloggers Network,Agentic Identity – Security Bloggers Network,Agentic Identity
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