How to Operationalize AI Security by Governing Agent Identities Proactively

Read full article from BeyondTrust  here: https://www.beyondtrust.com/blog/entry/how-to-govern-ai-agent-identities/?utm_source=nhimg

Agentic AI has rapidly evolved from experimental automation to a foundational component of enterprise operations. Across cloud, DevOps, and IT workflows, AI agents now create, deploy, and manage critical systems—often with privileged credentials that outnumber human identities by more than 90:1.

Yet, most organizations still treat identity governance as a human-centric discipline. This gap has allowed a silent expansion of non-human identities (NHIs) and exposed sensitive systems to identity-driven attacks. As these agents proliferate, they bring new governance challenges—unscoped privileges, long-lived credentials, and opaque automation—that adversaries are quick to exploit.

The Expanding Identity Risk of Agentic AI

AI agents operate autonomously, but their actions depend on tokens, API keys, and service accounts—the same credentials used by human administrators. When unmanaged, these secrets become a persistent attack surface.

Four primary identity risks emerge:

• Hidden Secrets and Credentials: Agents use long-lived tokens that remain active even after workflows or systems change, creating invisible exposures.
• Privilege Without Boundaries: Broadly scoped roles allow agents to escalate privileges or perform actions outside intended parameters.
• Opaque Automation: Unlike humans, AI agents act instantly without context or oversight, making real-time control essential.
• Orphaned Credentials: Unused or unmonitored secrets provide stealthy entry points for attackers to move laterally or persist.

These challenges demand an identity-first approach to AI security—one that treats every agent credential, permission, and privilege as part of the enterprise identity fabric.

The Agentic AI Security Checklist

To govern AI agents effectively, CISOs and security leaders must apply the same five principles used for human identity governance:

1. Gain Visibility – Discover agent credentials, secrets, and access paths.
2. Implement Least Privilege – Enforce narrowly scoped, just-in-time access.
3. Enforce Lifecycle Control – Rotate, retire, or reassign credentials dynamically.
4. Apply Risk-Based Response – Prioritize remediation for high-risk agents.
5. Own and Audit All Credentials – Assign every agent identity to a human owner.

BeyondTrust operationalizes these principles through Identity Security Insights and Password Safe, delivering unified discovery, control, and automation.

Where AI Agents and Privilege Collide

AI agents are now embedded in critical operational layers—DevOps, SaaS, and cloud infrastructure—where they routinely handle privileged access. Key risk areas include:

• DevOps Automation: Hardcoded secrets in IaC pipelines expose cloud APIs.
• Cloud Resource Management: Over-permissive roles grant unintended power to agents.
• SaaS Workflow Automation: Embedded static tokens in tools like Salesforce or ServiceNow bypass MFA and create compliance gaps.
• IT Operations and Incident Response: Agents with unscoped privileges can disrupt services or erase audit trails.

BeyondTrust’s Identity Security Insights discovers and maps these privilege paths, while Password Safe enforces secure vaulting, rotation, and lifecycle governance.

Dual Defense for AI Identity Security

Together, Identity Security Insights and Password Safe form a dual defense architecture for securing agentic AI environments:

• Identity Security Insights: Discovers hidden agent credentials, maps privilege relationships across Entra, AWS, GitHub, and Okta, and prioritizes risk with contextual visibility.
• Password Safe: Vaults, rotates, and audits agent credentials, enforcing just-in-time access and ensuring every AI action ties to a verifiable human owner.

This combination creates an auditable, continuous defense model where all AI agents operate within defined privilege boundaries.

Real-World Use Cases

• AWS Bedrock + Password Safe: Protects AI agents that assume AWS roles by vaulting and rotating credentials, preventing stale key reuse and automating rotation through Secrets Manager and ServiceNow.
• ServiceNow + Identity Security Insights: Detects and replaces static tokens in IT workflows with scoped, time-bound credentials, ensuring MFA compliance and auditable automation.
• Azure AI Foundry + Password Safe: Eliminates hardcoded secrets and enables runtime credential checkout for AI agents, maintaining lifecycle control and audit readiness.

These integrations demonstrate how BeyondTrust bridges automation and accountability, ensuring security controls extend to every AI-driven process.

The Path Forward: Identity-First AI Security

Attackers no longer hack in—they log in. As AI systems become integral to enterprise workflows, identity has become both the new perimeter and the ultimate risk surface.

Organizations that apply identity-first governance to AI will gain a decisive advantage: reducing risk, proving compliance, and enabling secure innovation. With BeyondTrust’s integrated capabilities, teams can achieve continuous visibility, dynamic privilege control, and full lifecycle governance—operationalizing AI securely before attackers exploit its weakest point.