Agentic AI is changing the identity security equation. Enterprises are no longer governing access only for employees and traditional machine identities. AI agents can act on behalf of people, interact with applications and data, acquire permissions and execute work at machine speed. That raises a more complicated question: How does an organization determine who or what is acting and whether that authority should still apply?
“Agentic AI turns identity governance into an execution problem,” said Krista Case, principal analyst and practice lead for cyber resilience and security at theCUBE Research. “Enterprises need to know who or what is acting, whose authority it carries, what it can reach and whether that authority should still apply as the task changes. Customers should evaluate identity platforms on how well they can maintain that context through the full lifecycle of an agent’s work.”
That question will be central to SailPoint’s Navigate event, taking place Oct. 5–8 in Austin, Texas. Under the theme “AI, secured,” the conference focuses on how identity security is changing as organizations add AI agents to an already expanding population of human and machine identities. SailPoint describes identity as a new control point for enterprise security, with this year’s event bringing that idea directly into the agentic AI era.
Join theCUBE Oct. 6–7 for exclusive interviews and analysis as Case and co-host Rebecca Knight speak with industry executives and identity security leaders about adaptive identity, agent lifecycle governance and the convergence of human, machine and AI agent identities as identity takes on a broader role in enterprise security. (* Disclosure below.)
AI agents turn identity into an execution problem
Traditional identity governance was largely built around people, roles and relatively predictable access patterns. Autonomous agents challenge that model because permissions are no longer simply granted to an identity and periodically reviewed. Agents can execute tasks, interact with other systems and change what they are doing as work progresses.
The numbers illustrate the scale of the problem. In a recent SiliconANGLE Media guest analysis, Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, cited SailPoint research showing that 97% of AI agents have access to sensitive data, while only 21% of organizations are highly confident they can manage AI agent security risks. Kerravala also pointed to a SailPoint proof of concept at a Fortune 500 company that discovered more than 10,000 previously unknown AI agents.
The problem starts with visibility. As Kerravala put it, “You can’t govern what you can’t see.”
SailPoint is also moving beyond periodic governance as identity risk becomes more immediate.
“We are moving the industry beyond static compliance and into an active, continuous security loop,” Chandra Gnanasambandam, executive vice president of product and chief technology officer of SailPoint, said in August. “By unifying the ability to discover every identity, govern access lifecycle policies and protect the enterprise through real-time risk remediation, we are giving security leaders the visibility and automation they need to confidently shut down modern attack vectors before they can be exploited.”
Agent growth tests traditional governance models
Discovering agents is only the first step. Enterprises also need to establish who owns them, what permissions they require and when those permissions should disappear. Agents can accumulate privileges, create or interact with other agents and use credentials across applications and infrastructure, increasing the potential impact of poorly governed access.
That makes agent governance as much an operating model problem as a technology problem.
“The hardest part of agent governance is organizational,” Case said. “Agents can be created and deployed faster than traditional access processes can discover, assign ownership and govern them. Customers need an operating model that connects AI development, identity, security and the business before agent populations reach a scale where governance becomes a cleanup exercise.”
That organizational challenge is likely to become more pressing as enterprises move from individual AI assistants toward larger populations of task-oriented autonomous agents. Identity teams will need to work more closely with security operations, application teams, AI developers and business owners to establish accountability before agents begin operating at scale.
Identity systems have a particular role because they provide context that runtime security alone cannot, according to Kerravala. Sandboxes and other containment technologies can limit what an agent does, but they do not necessarily determine who created it, who is accountable for it or how long its permissions should remain active. For that reason, “identity is the system of record everything else relies on,” Kerravala added.
One control plane may not be enough
SailPoint is positioning identity as an increasingly important control point as enterprises combine human, machine and agent identities. Its Navigate agenda reflects a broader industry shift toward putting identity closer to the center of enterprise security as AI expands the number and variety of entities requiring access.
The growth of AI agents is also expanding the identity attack surface, according to SailPoint.
“The proliferation of AI agents is creating a new class of non-human identities, and each one represents a new attack surface,” said Mark McClain, founder and chief executive officer of SailPoint. “For AI to be a true business accelerant, it must be built on a foundation of security. Our collaboration with AWS is about providing that foundation. By building a unified identity plane, we believe we will give our joint customers the visibility and control they need to manage the complexity of an AI-driven ecosystem, allowing them to innovate boldly and securely.”
But identity does not operate independently of the rest of the technology stack.
“Organizations should be careful with claims that a single platform will become the control plane for agentic AI,” Case said. “Agent governance spans identity, runtime infrastructure, applications, data and security telemetry. The winning architecture will depend on strong integration and clear decision authority across those systems.”
That distinction could become one of the most important questions surrounding enterprise agentic AI. Identity platforms may provide the record of who or what an agent is and what it should be allowed to access, while runtime environments, security tools, applications and data platforms provide other pieces of the enforcement architecture.
The challenge is connecting those systems quickly enough to govern autonomous actions without eliminating the speed and flexibility that make agents useful in the first place.
TheCUBE’s coverage will focus on how SailPoint and its customers are addressing that balance as identity governance expands beyond the human workforce. Key issues include how enterprises discover and classify AI agents, connect them to accountable human owners, apply least-privilege access and revoke permissions when an agent’s task or purpose changes.
Another question is whether organizations can create a unified governance model without forcing every identity type into the same operational framework. Humans, service accounts, machines and AI agents have different behaviors and risk profiles, even when they ultimately interact with the same applications and data.
SailPoint Navigate arrives as enterprises are beginning to confront those questions at production scale. The shift toward autonomous systems makes identity less about proving who logged in and more about continuously determining who or what has authority to act.
TheCUBE event livestream
Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of SailPoint’s Navigate event, Oct. 6–7. Plus, you can access theCUBE’s exclusive content on demand after the event.
How to watch theCUBE interviews
We offer various ways for you to watch theCUBE’s coverage of SailPoint’s Navigate event, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.
TheCUBE podcasts
SiliconANGLE’s “theCUBE Pod” is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, which you can enjoy while on the go. During each podcast, SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante discuss the biggest trends in enterprise tech, including AI, cloud, cybersecurity and infrastructure, with context and analysis.
SiliconANGLE also produces our weekly “Breaking Analysis” program, where Vellante examines major developments in enterprise tech, combining insights from theCUBE with spending data from Enterprise Technology Research, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
Guests
At SailPoint’s Navigate event on Oct. 6–7, theCUBE will speak with executives and identity security leaders from SailPoint, Amazon, Eastern Bank, HCLTech, Entro Security and others about how enterprises are governing AI agents, securing expanding identity populations and rethinking access as autonomous systems take on a larger role in business operations.
(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SailPoint’s Navigate event. Neither SailPoint, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)