How to Gain Control of AI Agents and Non-Human Identities

"Every enterprise today runs on more than users. Behind the scenes, thousands of non-human identities, from service accounts to API tokens to AI agents, access systems, move data, and execute tasks around the clock. They're not new. But they're multiplying fast. And most weren't built with security in mind. Traditional identity tools assume intent, context, and ownership. Non-human identities have none of those."

"What makes that especially risky is how little most teams know about them. NHIs often get created automatically during deployment or provisioning, then disappear from the radar, untracked, unowned, and often over-permissioned. Service accounts, in particular, are everywhere. They move data between systems, run scheduled jobs, and authenticate headless services. But their sprawl is rarely visible, and their permissions are rarely reviewed. Over time, they become perfect vehicles for lateral movement"

Non-human identities such as service accounts, API tokens, and AI agents operate continuously and have proliferated as cloud-first architectures increase infrastructure complexity. Many of these identities are created automatically during deployment or provisioning and often lack clear ownership, oversight, and regular permission reviews. Non-human identities do not exhibit human intent or context, do not log in or out, and are rarely offboarded. Autonomous agents can make decisions autonomously, frequently holding broad permissions with minimal oversight. Service accounts move data, run jobs, and authenticate headless services, becoming favoured vectors for lateral movement as their sprawl grows invisible. An identity security fabric is needed to inventory, assign ownership, enforce least privilege, and monitor non-human identity behavior at scale.

Read at The Hacker News