AI Agents & Identity Governance: A New Security Challenge

AI agents are creating a new challenge for identity governance because they don't fit into existing human or machine identity categories. While CIOs are enthusiastic about using large language models, CISOs are concerned about the risks. Traditional identity programs assume every identity is either human or a machine. Human identities have a clear lifecycle and roles, while non-human identities like service accounts have a defined purpose. However, AI agents don't fit neatly into either of these. An agent acts on behalf of a human user, but its access can change mid-task based on prompts or tools it uses. This means its behavior isn't always predictable, unlike a typical workload identity. This is an urgent issue because non-human identities already outnumber human ones in many enterprise environments. This challenge requires security teams to fundamentally rethink their approach to identity governance.