In recent months, the conversation around agentic AI has moved from speculative to strategic. Enterprises are rapidly deploying autonomous agents to streamline operations, eliminate bottlenecks, and increase productivity. But there’s a hidden cost few organizations have adequately prepared for: the exponential explosion of Non-Human Identities these agents require - and the security blind spots they create.
Today, we’re excited to release our latest technical paper:
The Enterprise Agentic AI Security Stack: A Non-Human Identity Crisis
This paper is not a market trend overview or a general AI whitepaper. It’s a deep technical dive into the fastest-emerging security risk in modern enterprise environments: the unchecked growth and governance failures around AI-driven NHIs like API keys, service accounts, tokens, and other credentials.
From 45:1 to 500% Growth - What’s Happening?
In 2023, enterprises typically managed about 45 NHIs per human identity. That was a lot, yet manageable. But agentic AI is changing that - fast, and at scale. With each AI agent using 3–10 credentials across multiple systems, early adopters are now seeing 300–500% annual NHI growth. In 2025, a ratio of 82:1 is the new reality.
What makes this dangerous isn’t just the volume. It’s that these NHIs behave nothing like traditional ones.
AI agents don’t follow static workflows. They dynamically reason about context, select tools, and use credentials in unpredictable combinations - often outside the scope of traditional IAM visibility and provisioning logic. A Stripe key one day, a database token the next - all based on the agent’s interpretation of a human request.
Not All “Agents” Are Equal
Our paper outlines a crucial distinction most teams miss: agentic AI vs. “agent-washed” automation. The latter is what many companies are currently deploying - rigid workflows with AI-powered features. These follow predictable credential paths and are relatively safe. But true agentic AI? That’s a different beast entirely.
To test if you’re working with agentic AI, ask:
Can the system solve novel, multi-intent requests by independently combining existing tools it was never explicitly programmed to use?
If the answer is yes, you’re dealing with a system that requires fundamentally new identity governance.
Write Permissions: The Real Risk Multiplier
Read-only agents may leak data. Write-enabled agents can destroy it. One of the paper’s most powerful insights is how write access turns linear risk into exponential chaos. With write access, even small misinterpretations by AI agents can trigger cascading, irreversible actions across interconnected systems - actions no human can review fast enough, or even trace back properly.
This is not theoretical. We detail real-world agent behavior where a single instruction leads to over-permissioned access changes, broken data propagation, or unauthorized financial transactions.
Shadow Agents Are Already Inside Your Org
Many teams believe their AI usage is minimal. But in reality, shadow deployments - agentic tools launched without IT approval, using unmanaged credentials - are everywhere. These pose the highest risk. With no audit trails, no credential lifecycle management, and no boundary controls, a single developer experiment could expose production data to AI agents with no oversight.
The paper breaks down three deployment tiers:
- Tier 1: Shadow agents (unmanaged, invisible)
- Tier 2: Platform-integrated agents (semi-governed)
- Tier 3: Cloud-native agents (governed, but still high-risk)
Each tier presents different risks, and most organizations are currently in Tier 1 or 2 without even realizing it.
The Governance Stack You’ll Need
Traditional IAM doesn’t cut it. What’s required is a new identity security stack purpose-built for agentic AI:
- Dynamic credential provisioning
- Real-time reasoning validation and anomaly detection
- Tiered permission architectures
- Human-in-the-loop workflows for critical write actions
- Agent inventory, traceability, and behavioral analytics
Security leaders must stop treating AI agents like users or scripts. These are autonomous, unpredictable actors that deserve their own governance model.
Want to See What Proper Agent NHI Governance Looks Like?
If you’re an enterprise security leader looking to deploy agentic AI - or already doing so - you’ll want to read this paper before your identity sprawl becomes unmanageable.
Click here to read the full paperThis isn’t about chasing hype. It’s about preparing for what’s already happening inside your organization. Agentic AI is here. The question is whether your security stack is ready for it.
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