An employee with persistent, unsupervised admin access across critical systems, with no audit trail, no clear owner, and no regular access reviews, would raise immediate concern in most organizations. Yet non-human identities and AI agents are often granted that same kind of persistent, broadly privileged access. As AI adoption grows, that gap is becoming harder to ignore.

Non-human identities (NHIs) today encompass far more than traditional service accounts and API keys. They also include AI agents that make autonomous decisions, automated workflows with cross-system access, and shadow AI tools deployed by business users without IT oversight. These entities operate at machine speed, with dynamic behavior patterns that legacy identity and access management (IAM) systems were never designed to handle.

The Double Standard in Enterprise Security

Security teams often believe they are prepared for AI adoption at scale. According to a recent Delinea survey, 87% of organizations say their identity security posture is ready for the AI era. However, the same survey reveals a glaring contradiction: 46% of IT decision-makers admit that their AI identity governance is deficient. This dissonance represents a risky double standard that can expose organizations to breaches, data leaks, and compliance violations.

Three fundamental factors drive this double standard, each reinforcing the others to create a cycle of compromised identity governance.

Priority of Speed Over Governance

Business pressure to deploy AI initiatives fast means identity controls get relaxed or skipped entirely. The survey found that 90% of organizations place pressure on security teams to loosen access controls to support AI-driven automation. When tension arises between security requirements and business speed, fewer than 1 in 3 organizations enforce security requirements consistently. This creates a dangerous trade-off where innovation is prioritized over safeguard implementation.

Poor Monitoring of Shadow AI

Unsanctioned agents operate outside any governance framework entirely. A significant 53% of surveyed organizations regularly encounter unauthorized AI tools and agents accessing company systems. These deployments bypass traditional provisioning processes, creating unmonitored access points that security teams struggle to detect. Shadow AI can include everything from employees using ChatGPT with corporate data to custom scripts that automate tasks across cloud environments. Without visibility, organizations cannot assess the risk posed by these rogue identities.

Unchecked NHI Activity

Traditional identity management systems rely on predictable, human-centric workflows. Legacy IAM tools lack the velocity and dynamic capabilities needed to govern autonomous agents that make independent decisions and request elevated privileges without warning. NHIs often operate in ephemeral environments such as containers, serverless functions, or multi-cloud architectures, where persistent oversight is difficult. As a result, organizations often grant NHIs broad, standing access simply to ensure uptime—74% of organizations say standing access for NHIs and AI agents is necessary to meet uptime expectations, while 59% report they lack viable alternatives to persistent access.

The Operational Reality

The survey data reveals an uncomfortable operational reality: security teams knowingly accept risk under pressure. More than half of organizations have no alternative to persistent access for machine identities, leaving them vulnerable to lateral movement if a single NHI is compromised. Attackers increasingly target NHIs because they often have elevated privileges and lack the governance applied to human users. For example, a compromised API key or AI agent credential can allow attackers to exfiltrate sensitive data, manipulate AI model outputs, or disrupt automated workflows without triggering traditional detection mechanisms.

Consider the following: 82% of organizations report confidence in their ability to discover NHIs with access to production systems, but fewer than 1 in 3 actually validate NHI and AI agent activity in real-time. This confidence gap is dangerous, as it leads to a false sense of security. The vast majority of IT decision-makers surveyed admit to at least some sort of identity visibility gap, with NHIs representing the largest blind spot. Without real-time validation, organizations cannot detect anomalous behavior such as an AI agent suddenly requesting access to databases it has never needed before.

Closing the AI Identity Risk Gap

Organizations must confront the AI security confidence paradox. Expressing high confidence in AI readiness despite knowing there are fundamental AI-related identity governance gaps happens because information is incomplete. Security teams cannot protect against what they cannot see. To close this gap, organizations need a multi-step approach that prioritizes visibility, reduces standing privileges, and enforces continuous governance.

Step 1: Establish Complete Visibility

Before implementing new access controls or policies, organizations must establish a clear inventory of which NHIs exist—including shadow AI use, what they have access to, and whether any of that access is standing or persistent. Without foundational visibility, any governance efforts become guesswork rather than risk-based decision-making. Automated discovery tools that can map machine identities across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments in real time are essential. These tools should also detect unauthorized AI agents and flag orphaned accounts that may have been created during development or testing phases.

Step 2: Implement Zero Standing Privilege

Just-in-time (JIT) and ephemeral access represent the goal for NHI governance, even if they are not immediately achievable for most organizations. The survey shows that organizations are more than twice as likely to use long-lived credentials (34%) compared to modern just-in-time authorization (16%). Moving to a zero standing privilege model requires rethinking how NHIs authenticate and receive authorization. Technologies such as dynamic secrets, API token rotation, and policy-based access control can help reduce the attack surface. As Gerry Auger, head of SimplyCyber, notes: "I'll count it as a win if we just have an inventory of all the identities that have standing access."

Additional Governance Tips

• Monitor for anomalous privilege requests: Watch for NHIs requesting elevated privileges unexpectedly because it often signals either compromised accounts or poorly configured automation. Set up alerts for any NHI that requests access to a system or data store it has never accessed before.
• Review accounts without clear ownership: Flag accounts with no clear owner or business justification for immediate review. Orphaned NHIs can linger for years and become easy targets for attackers.
• Enforce regular access certification: Treat NHI access reviews with the same rigor you apply to human access reviews, including regular certification and deprovisioning of unused accounts. Automated certification workflows can help scale this process across thousands of identities.

Building Secure AI Without Slowing Innovation

Organizations cannot halt AI adoption—the competitive pressure is too great. The reality-based goal is closing the visibility and governance gap that allows risky access patterns to persist undetected. This requires upgrading identity infrastructure to handle the velocity and unpredictability of agentic AI. Security teams can satisfy business demands for speed without abandoning identity governance entirely by adopting modern IAM solutions designed for machine identities.

Automated discovery tools, continuous governance frameworks, and just-in-time access models are no longer optional—they are essential for secure AI adoption. The path forward involves recognizing that NHIs are not just an IT operations issue but a core security concern that demands the same level of oversight as human users. By addressing the double standard head-on, organizations can unlock the full potential of AI while keeping their digital assets protected.

Ultimately, the goal is to create an environment where NHIs are treated as first-class identities with appropriate lifecycle management, least-privilege access, and continuous monitoring. Only then can organizations truly claim to be ready for the AI-driven future without compromising their security posture.

Source: Help Net Security News