Is Your Business Ready for the AI Agent Revolution?

Read full article from Okta here: https://www.okta.com/blog/ai/preparing-for-ai-agents/?utm_source=nhimg

Artificial Intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s a present-day operational reality. Across industries, AI agents are quietly performing tasks once handled by humans: automating workflows, making decisions, and accessing sensitive enterprise data. But as these autonomous digital entities proliferate, a critical question emerges: how do we secure them?

According to Okta’s AI at Work 2025 survey of 260 executives, 91% of organizations are already using AI agents across multiple use cases. Yet, only 10% have a mature strategy for managing these Non-Human Identities (NHIs). This imbalance has created a new security blind spot—one where powerful AI-driven systems operate without proper identity controls or governance.

The Rise of Unseen Risk: AI Agents as a Security Blind Spot

Traditional security models were built for humans—employees with roles, managers, and accountability. AI agents don’t fit that mold. They spawn and retire rapidly, request privileges dynamically, and operate without consistent oversight. This volatility leaves behind untracked credentials and unmanaged access points, creating an ideal entryway for cyber attackers.

AI agents introduce unique challenges:

• Lack of accountability: Agents act on behalf of systems, not individuals, making it difficult to assign responsibility when incidents occur.
• Ephemeral lifecycles: They’re created and destroyed in seconds, leaving behind unmonitored access trails.
• Excessive privileges: Agents often receive persistent or overly broad permissions, creating unnecessary exposure.
• Limited visibility: Without identity tracking, it’s nearly impossible to audit or respond effectively to security incidents.
• Unpredictable behavior: Non-deterministic decision-making makes it hard to forecast access patterns or control risk consistently.

In essence, AI agents are both a new opportunity and a new insider threat. Without identity governance, they can unintentionally become the weakest link in the enterprise security chain.

AI Agents Belong in the Identity Security Fabric

For years, security teams have battled unmanaged service accounts, machine credentials, and automation scripts—precursors to today’s AI agents. The lesson is clear: visibility and governance are non-negotiable.

To address this, Okta proposes a modern Identity Security Fabric for the Age of AI — a unified framework that extends identity governance to every entity, human or non-human, across cloud and on-prem environments. This fabric ensures every AI agent has a traceable, auditable, and governable identity.

Okta’s Approach to Securing AI Agents

Okta is leading the effort to bring AI agents under centralized identity control. Within the identity security fabric, Okta enables four essential functions for AI agent management:

1. Detect and Discover – Automatically identify all active AI agents, understand their behavior, and assess their security posture.
2. Provision and Register – Assign unique, trackable identities to agents, each linked to a responsible human owner.
3. Authorize and Protect – Limit agent access through Cross App Access (XAA), a new open protocol for secure, temporary, and least-privilege connectivity.
4. Govern and Monitor – Continuously oversee agent activity, automate access reviews, and maintain compliance with detailed audit trails.

This model transforms AI security into what it truly is — an identity security problem.

The Future of AI Security Is Identity Security

As AI agents gain autonomy and influence over critical systems, the line between automation and accountability blurs. Without clear identity governance, organizations face an escalating risk of shadow AI, unauthorized data exposure, and operational compromise.

In this new era, visibility, control, and accountability form the cornerstone of trust. You can’t protect what you can’t see — and you can’t govern what you don’t identify. By embedding AI agents into the identity security fabric, organizations can secure innovation without sacrificing safety.