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AI Agent and Machine Identity Security
IDENT1TY secures the identities and access of your AI agents and machine identities, so automation never becomes a vulnerability. We map, govern, and control every non-human identity, from service accounts to autonomous AI agents, with least privilege and full traceability.
What is machine identity security?
Machine identity security is the discipline that protects and governs non-human identities, the service accounts, API keys, tokens, workloads, and AI agents that authenticate and act across systems without a human behind the keyboard. It extends identity security beyond people to the fast growing population of machines and autonomous agents that now run most enterprise operations.
A machine identity, or non-human identity (NHI), is any credential that lets a machine talk to infrastructure: an API key, an OAuth token, an SSH key, a workload certificate, or the identity of an AI agent. Unlike human identities, machines cannot perform MFA, they operate 24/7 with no normal behaviour pattern, and they often persist indefinitely without lifecycle management, which makes them inherently harder to secure.
AI agents are the most critical subset. They are not passive credential holders, they are autonomous actors that acquire permissions at runtime, call external APIs, spawn sub-agents, and chain actions across systems.
This expands the blast radius of any single compromised credential far beyond what a static service account could reach, which is why machine identity security has become a defining priority for 2026.
Machine identities, NHIs, and AI agents: what they mean
These terms overlap and are often used loosely. Here is how they relate.
Non-human identity (NHI) is the umbrella term for any identity that is not a person: service accounts, API keys, OAuth tokens, SSH keys, workload certificates, and bots.
Machine identity is used interchangeably with NHI, emphasizing the credentials that let workloads, applications, and devices authenticate to each other.
AI agent identity is the newest and fastest growing category of NHI: the identity of an autonomous system that reasons, decides, and acts across systems on behalf of users or other systems.
The key distinction is behaviour. A traditional NHI is static: you can enumerate, scope, rotate, and revoke it. An AI agent is dynamic: it can request new permissions and act in sequences no policy anticipated. Securing the first is an inventory problem. Securing the second is a governance problem, and it is the one most organizations are least prepared for.
Why choose an IAM integrator over a single vendor
Most vendors sell you a tool to vault secrets. But securing machine and AI agent identities is not a vaulting problem, it is a governance problem: no ownership, no lifecycle, no visibility into what an agent actually does after access is granted.
As a vendor neutral integrator, IDENT1TY delivers the governance layer that tooling alone cannot. We map every AI agent and machine identity across your environment, including the undeclared ones, define ownership and lifecycle rules, and align AI agent governance with your existing IAM, IGA, PAM, and cloud security policies.
That means you get:
- Full visibility of every non-human identity, official, experimental, and undeclared, mapped and classified.
- A governance model specifying the owner, scope, risk level, and purpose of each agent, with least privilege enforced.
- Alignment with your IAM, IGA, PAM, and machine identity policies, plus audit ready traceability for DORA and sector regulators.
A pure vendor secures the credential. An integrator governs the identity, and its behaviour, over time.
Why most AI projects fail?
Uncontrolled access rights
Exposure to cyber threats, non-compliance with NIS2/ISO27001
Projects abandoned halfway
Costs explode, results never achieved
Undersized teams
Delays, vendor dependency, operational risks
How IDENT1TY secures AI identities where others fall short
AI agents generate thousands of non-human identities invisible to traditional solutions. Our approach was built for this challenge from day one.
Total visibility on non-human identities
Automatic mapping of every AI agent, service account and API token, including those created dynamically at runtime.
Lifecycle-adapted governance
Access policies aligned with AI workload ephemerality: just-in-time access, automatic secret rotation, immediate revocation.
Multi-vendor independence
Compatible with OpenAI, Azure AI, Bedrock, Vertex AI and any on-premise model. No lock-in to a proprietary ecosystem.
Measurable results within 30 days
Quantified attack surface reduction, CISO and auditor-ready reporting included in every engagement.
What we do today
We help organizations identify, classify and govern AI agents as fully fledged digital identities in their own right.
Mapping · Governance · IAM · IGA- Mapping of the AI agents used across the organization, including official, experimental and undeclared agents
- Definition of a governance model specifying the owner, scope, risk level and purpose of each agent
- Implementation of rules for the creation, validation, modification and decommissioning of identities associated with AI agents
- Alignment of AI agent governance with existing IAM, IGA, PAM, cloud security and machine identity policies
We secure the access granted to AI agents in order to limit excessive privileges and the risk of unauthorized actions.
Least privilege · Permissions · Zero Trust- Definition of access models based on the principle of least privilege, context, agent role and the criticality of actions
- Implementation of granular permissions across applications, APIs, data, internal tools and cloud environments
- Framing of sensitive actions through human approval, just-in-time access and conditional rules
- Reduction of the risk of privilege escalation, lateral movement or indirect access through agent chains
We protect the secrets used by AI agents to prevent leaks and invisible dependencies on credentials.
API Keys · OAuth · Rotation · Vaulting- Secure vaulting of API keys, OAuth tokens, certificates, service accounts and secrets used by AI agents
- Implementation of rotation, expiration, revocation and scope-limitation policies for credentials
- Removal of secrets exposed in prompts, memories, logs, configuration files or code repositories
- Strict separation of credentials by agent, environment, application, risk level and business use
We enable organizations to know exactly what an AI agent has done, with which privileges and on which data.
Logging · SIEM · Audit · Accountability- Comprehensive logging of the actions performed by AI agents: access, requests, API calls, changes, decisions and executions
- Correlation of AI events with existing SIEM, SOC, ITSM, PAM, IAM and monitoring platforms
- Implementation of detective controls for abnormal behavior, destructive actions or unauthorized access
- Production of audit evidence that traces accountability across the user, the agent, the tool and the action performed
We help our clients secure the chains of autonomous actions executed by AI agents.
Human-in-the-loop · Guardrails · Agentic AI- Analysis of agentic workflows to identify decision points, sensitive actions and critical dependencies
- Implementation of guardrails for high-impact actions: deletion, configuration changes, access to production
- Control of the tools accessible to AI agents in order to limit unnecessary or dangerous capabilities
- Definition of human-in-the-loop scenarios to enforce human validation before critical operations
We support organizations in establishing a measurable control framework to secure the use of AI agents.
NIST AI RMF · EU AI Act · Audit · Risk- Assessment of the risks associated with AI agents according to use cases, the data handled, the systems accessed and the level of autonomy
- Definition of internal policies governing the use, access, responsibilities and operational limits of AI agents
- Implementation of compliance dashboards covering agents, their privileges, their actions, their exceptions and their incidents
- Alignment of controls with AI security and risk-management frameworks, notably NIST AI RMF-style approaches
Our numbers talk for us
28
Years of experience
+100
Active Certifications
76
Projects deployed in 2025
17
Countries covered
+40
IAM/PAM/IGA certified experts
Use cases
AI agent supporting the identity service desk
Automated handling of level-1 access requests under human supervision, with compliance guardrails.
The identity service desk was handling a high volume of repetitive requests, leaving the IAM teams little time for higher-value work.
The security leadership wanted to trial an AI agent capable of absorbing level-1 requests, without degrading compliance or replacing human oversight on sensitive decisions.
Another use case, another challenge.
AI agent supporting access review decisions
Contextual recommendations and risk scoring to turn IGA campaigns into qualitative reviews.
Access review campaigns suffered from mass, undifferentiated rubber-stamping. Managers, faced with hundreds of accesses to validate, were approving without any real analysis.
The goal was to bring meaning back to the reviews without adding to the managers' workload, by leveraging available data to focus their attention on genuinely high-risk access.
How Ident1ty works on your project AI
Solution
integrator
We deploy your AI solution from A to Z.
Continuous Support & Managed Services
We maintain and optimize your AI environment.
Success
Plan
A dedicated ISM to support you.
AI Security
Strategy
We secure the identities and access of your AI agents.
AI Agent and Machine Identity Security FAQ
Clear answers on what machine identities and AI agents are, why they are a risk, and how to govern them.
If you are deploying AI agents faster than you can track them, these are the questions to ask now.
What is machine identity security?
What is a non-human identity (NHI)?
Why are machine identities harder to secure than human ones?
What is AI agent security?
How do AI agents differ from traditional machine identities?
How does machine identity security relate to IAM, IGA, and PAM?
What type of project IAM/PAM/IGA Have you planned this year?
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