Topic starter
24/06/2026 10:27 pm
TL;DR: Akeyless argues that secrets management, PAM, certificate management, and key management remain fragmented as enterprises add humans, workloads, machines, and AI agents, leaving blind spots that static provisioning models cannot cover. Runtime identity enforcement matters because access now has to follow execution, not just issuance.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Akeyless: “Akeyless vs. CyberArk”.
Key questions
Q: How should security teams implement runtime access decisions in identity governance?
A: Start with the highest-risk decisions, such as privileged access and sensitive application requests, and wire in live signals from security and device telemetry.
Q: Why do long-lived secrets create more risk for workloads and agentic AI systems?
A: Long-lived secrets increase blast radius because any exposed key can be reused until it is rotated or revoked.
Q: What breaks when secrets, PAM, and certificate management stay in separate tools?
A: The main failure is inconsistent governance.
Practitioner guidance
- Map runtime access paths Inventory where human users, workloads, machines, and AI agents obtain access only at execution time, then trace which of those paths still depend on long-lived credentials.
- Separate persistent access from task-scoped access Classify which identities truly require standing privileges and which can operate with ephemeral, policy-controlled access tied to a single workflow or session.
- Unify policy across identity silos Align secrets, PAM, certificate, and key lifecycle rules so that one entitlement model governs issuance, use, audit, and revocation across the stack.
Bottom line: The article's core risk is fragmentation across secrets, PAM, certificates, and keys, which leaves identity governance inconsistent just as more actor types need access.
What's in the full announcement
Akeyless's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The vendor's side-by-side comparison tables for secrets management, PAM, certificate lifecycle management, and AI agent security
- The specific runtime identity features it claims for ephemeral access, secretless connectivity, and policy enforcement
- The product-level distinctions it draws between its control plane and CyberArk-linked capabilities across multiple identity domains
- The FAQ section that expands the platform claims into implementation-oriented answers
👉 Read Akeyless's analysis of unified runtime identity security for AI agents →
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25/06/2026 7:08 am
Identity security is converging on runtime governance because provisioning-time control no longer matches operational reality. Enterprises are now attaching access to workloads, machines, containers, and AI agents that execute continuously and often independently of human timing. That means the old separation between identity issuance and identity use is collapsing into a single control problem. The practitioner conclusion is straightforward: governance has to evaluate access in motion, not only at setup.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 88% of organisations have embedded AI agents in their workflows, according to KPMG's 2026 report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can organisations tell whether runtime identity controls are actually working?
A: Look for evidence that unsafe access attempts are being blocked, stepped up, or constrained at the point of use. If the programme only produces reports, alerts, or post-event findings, then it is measuring risk rather than controlling it. The key signal is whether the access path changes in response to policy.
👉 Read our full editorial: Akeyless frames unified runtime identity security for AI agents