Topic starter
17/05/2026 9:32 am
TL;DR: AI agents often leave one trace in network traffic and another in the credentials they use, so most tools still miss the full picture of risk, according to Astrix Security. Continuous discovery only becomes useful when security teams can tie connections to the non-human identities, permissions, and owners behind them.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Astrix Security: “Astrix and Fortinet: Combining Network Visibility With Identity Context for AI Agent Security”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when AI agent observability relies only on in-process telemetry?
A: You lose evidence quality as soon as the workload can influence the collector.
Q: Why does an AI agent with no accountable owner create governance risk?
A: An AI agent without a clear owner can continue running after the original project ends, the creator changes roles, or permissions drift out of date.
Q: How can teams detect shadow AI before it becomes a breach issue?
A: Teams should correlate identity, endpoint, CASB, and procurement data to surface AI tools and services that bypass approved review.
Practitioner guidance
- Map network telemetry to identity records Correlate firewall and proxy logs with NHI inventory so every detected agent connection resolves to an owner, credential, and permission set.
- Inventory shadow AI and unmanaged MCP servers Run continuous discovery across endpoints, SaaS, and DevOps tooling to find agents and MCP servers that never passed through formal onboarding.
- Attach blast-radius scoring to each agent identity Score write access, production reach, and cross-system permissions so risky agents are prioritised before broad access becomes normalised.
Bottom line: AI agents are difficult to govern when network telemetry and identity context are split across different tools.
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17/05/2026 9:33 am
Network-only discovery creates an identity blind spot: Perimeter telemetry can show that an AI agent connected, but it cannot tell you which non-human identity executed the action, who owns it, or whether the permissions are acceptable. That is a governance failure, not a logging failure. Security teams should treat network data as incomplete until it is joined to identity context.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should IAM teams evaluate before allowing shared AI agent access?
A: They should evaluate whether the access path can be scoped per user, revoked centrally, and audited in a structured way. If any of those are missing, the organisation will struggle to prove what the agent did, who it acted for, and whether the access remained appropriate.
👉 Read our full editorial: AI agent discovery needs both network and identity context