Agentic AI Has an Identity Problem and Attackers Know It

Agentic AI systems (autonomous AI agents that can authenticate, call APIs, write code, and take action in production environments) create new security challenges because they operate with human-like autonomy but at machine speed and scale, yet organizations lack proper identity management for them. Traditional security approaches built for humans and service accounts fall short because AI agents need contextual, intent-based access that changes based on their goals and environment, not just static minimum permissions. The article identifies three critical problems: organizations don't know what AI agents exist or who owns them (visibility problem), agents are often given too many permissions (overprivilege problem), and traditional identity systems weren't designed to handle this level of autonomy and decentralization.