Securing the new identity perimeter: AI for – and against – AI agents

The era of a purely human workforce has ended.

Modern enterprises oversee vast ecosystems of non-human identities (NHIs) – in addition to their employees and contractors.

These service accounts, APIs, bots, and artificial intelligence (AI) agents often have broad, autonomous access privileges across on-premises and cloud environments. And they’re multiplying much faster than IT teams can secure them. Traditional tools designed for humans simply weren’t built for this scale or complexity.

That’s why next-generation identity security demands AI.

The pressure to modernize

With the rise of NHIs and AI agents, it’s not uncommon for organizations to manage millions of entitlements. Teams must continuously review these permissions to prevent access creep that, left unchecked, can lead to sensitive data exposure or system compromise. Orphaned and inactive NHIs pose additional risks.

Meanwhile, the ways in which identities interact with applications and data can shift minute to minute. For example, a service account may suddenly begin accessing systems outside its normal scope, or an AI agent might start taking unexpected actions around the clock.

Without the real-time monitoring and automated responses that AI provides, this dynamic environment increases the risk of overprovisioned access and orphaned accounts – both of which represent high-value targets for attackers.

The rewards and risks of AI

AI makes every aspect of identity governance – from user provisioning and entitlement reviews to policy enforcement – more efficient and responsive. Natural language interfaces, for example, let users complete common tasks such as requesting application permissions without having to understand backend processes. And agentic AI quickly and cost-effectively onboards new applications and services, addressing a longstanding challenge.

AI can also detect anomalies and correlate access activity across systems to provide deeper, more contextual insights. For instance, it might issue an alert that a recently onboarded AI agent was granted privileged access to financial systems and is now interacting with data stores that were never part of its expected workflow.

While AI enhances identity governance, it also expands the attack surface.

AI agents are not like traditional machine identities. They behave more like humans, making decisions, performing tasks, and interacting with multiple systems autonomously. A compromised AI agent can exfiltrate data and move laterally to disrupt operations across environments. Yet many organizations still lump AI agents into the broader category of non-human identities, leaving security teams unprepared to manage their unique behaviors and risks.

Securing AI with AI

Securing modern identity ecosystems requires a new approach. Saviynt’s Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) framework is built around four core pillars: identity data hygiene, governance control effectiveness, derived and inherited identity risk, and AI-powered security. These capabilities are critical for managing both traditional NHIs and autonomous AI agents.

The platform begins with full discovery of all human identities, NHIs and AI components across on-prem, SaaS and cloud-based systems. It then maps relationships between identities, systems, and entitlements to provide complete visibility into access scope and behavioral context. Identity posture scores help security teams pinpoint risky accounts, while ownership workflows streamline accountability for each identity. Saviynt also supports audit readiness through timeline-based views of identity lifecycle modifications, such as new identities, added permissions, and ownership changes.

At the same time, pre-built guardrails and remediation workflows enforce least-privilege access, reduce the risk of misconfiguration, and keep up with rapidly changing access patterns. And because Saviynt distinguishes between static and agentic NHIs, it can tailor controls based on each identity’s level of autonomy, access scope, and operational risk.

Managing AI effectively requires identity security that moves at machine speed. Learn how Saviynt helps secure every identity at saviynt.com.