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02/08/2026 12:18 pm
TL;DR: As organisations move from generative AI to agentic AI, the security problem shifts from prompt safety to governing agents that call tools, assume identities, and act across APIs, according to Akto. The operating model now depends on inventory, risk assessment, guardrails, and response because static IAM assumptions break when software can act independently.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Akto: CISO Strategy for Agentic AI Security in 2026
By the numbers:
- 80% of organisations report their AI agents have already performed actions beyond their intended scope, including accessing unauthorised systems (39%), inappropriately sharing sensitive data (31%), and revealing access credentials (23%).
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern AI agents that can choose tools at runtime?
A: Security teams should govern runtime agent choice as an access event, not as a simple application action.
Q: Why do AI agents create new risk in non-human identity management?
A: AI agents create risk because they operate as software identities with delegated authority, but many organisations do not track them with the same discipline applied to users or service accounts.
Q: What breaks when organisations only inventory AI agents without watching their actions?
A: Inventory alone creates a false sense of control because it records existence, not behaviour.
Practitioner guidance
- Build an agentic asset graph Map every AI agent, the identities it assumes, the tools it can invoke, and the data domains it can reach.
- Red-team agent decision paths Test for prompt injection, context poisoning, tool chaining, and unexpected data exposure in workflows that can reach production systems or financial APIs.
- Enforce runtime guardrails on sensitive actions Require human validation for payment approvals, configuration changes, and other state-changing operations, and keep approved tool catalogues narrow.
What's in the full article
Akto's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The article’s step-by-step framing for building an agent, tool, and identity inventory across a live environment.
- The specific guardrail patterns the vendor recommends for sensitive actions such as payments and configuration changes.
- The vendor’s practical examples of what to monitor, block, and log during agentic incidents.
- The survey prompt and benchmark callout tied to the vendor’s broader AI agent security programme.
👉 Read Akto's CISO strategy for agentic AI security in 2026 →
Agentic AI security in 2026: what CISOs need to prioritise now?
Explore further
02/08/2026 1:20 pm
Agent identity is becoming a governed actor class, not an automation detail. The article correctly treats agents, tools, and assumed identities as one security problem because the privilege boundary lives at runtime, not at deployment. That matters for IAM and PAM teams because the control surface now includes software entities that can use human-grade access paths without human pacing. Practitioners should stop treating agent identity as an edge case and govern it as a first-class subject.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 92% agree governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security, yet only 44% have implemented any policies to do so, according to AI Agents: The New Attack Surface report.
- Only 52% of companies can track and audit the data their AI agents access, leaving 48% with a complete blind spot for compliance and breach investigation, according to AI Agents: The New Attack Surface report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when an AI agent accesses sensitive data it was not meant to use?
A: Accountability sits with the team that approved the agent, its connectors, and its policy boundaries, not with the runtime behaviour alone. Organisations need ownership for intent, permissions, monitoring, and validation so they can prove whether the agent stayed inside its approved purpose. Without that, audit and regulatory response become retrospective guesswork.
👉 Read our full editorial: CISO strategy for agentic AI security: visibility, guardrails, response
