AI agents are committed to automating everything from financial adjustments to incident response. However, every time an AI agent rotates a workflow, it needs to be authenticated somewhere. Often, you use a High-Privilege API key, OAuth token, or service account that Defenders cannot easily view. These “invisible” nonhuman identities (NHIS) surpass human accounts in most cloud environments, making them one of the most ripe targets for attackers.
Astrix Field CTO Jonathan Sander said frankly towards the recent hacker news webinar:
“One of the dangerous habits we’ve had for a long time is to trust application logic that acts as Guardrails. This won’t work if the AI agent drives an LLMS that doesn’t stop and doesn’t think about it when you’re trying to do something wrong.
Why AI Agents Redefine Identity Risk
Autonomy changes everything. AI agents can chain multiple API calls and modify data without human beings in a loop. If the underlying credentials are public or disadvantaged, each additional action amplifies the explosion radius. LLMS behaves unpredictable. Traditional codes follow deterministic rules. Large language models work with probability. This means that we cannot guarantee how or where the access that an agent grants is used. Existing IAM tools were built for humans. Most identity governance platforms focus on employees rather than tokens. They lack the context of mappings that which agents belong to which agents, who own them, and what their identities can actually touch.
AI agents treat you like first class (non-human) users
Successful security programs already apply “human grade” controls such as birth, living, retirement to service accounts and machine credentials. Extending the same discipline to AI agents will bring you a quick victory without blocking business innovation.
How to Apply to Human Identity Control AI Agent Owner Assignment Every agent needs a human owner with the name (for example, the developer who configured a custom GPT) who is responsible for its access. The least privilege starts with a read-only scoped scope and grants narrowly scoped write actions to the moment they require. The Lifecycle Governance Deprecation Credential Agent has been deprecated and automatically rotates secrets on schedule. Continuous monitoring monitors abnormal calls (sudden spikes to sensitive APIs) and monitoring to revoke access in real time.
Protect AI Agent Access
Businesses don’t have to choose between security and agility.
Astrix provides easy protection for innovation without slowing down, providing all your critical controls in one intuitive platform.
1. Discovery and Governance
Automatically discover and map all AI agents, including external and homemade agents. The context has context for the associated NHIS, permissions, owners, and access environments. Prioritize repair efforts based on automated risk scoring based on agent exposure levels and configuration weaknesses.
2. Lifecycle Management
Manage AI agents and NHIs that rely on from provisioning to decommission, without manual overhead, through automated ownership, policy enforcement and streamlined remediation processes.
3. Threat detection and response
Continuously monitor AI agent activity to detect deviations, out-of-scope actions and anomalous behavior while automating repairs with real-time alerts, workflows, and survey guides.
Instant Impact: From risk to ROI in 30 days
Within the first month of deploying Astrix, customers will consistently report three transformative business victories within the first month of deployment.
Lower risk, zero blind spot
The auto-discovery and single source of truth from all AI agents NHI and Secret reveal unauthorized third-party connections, excessive title tokens, and policy violations at the moment they appear. It is short-lived and prevents your credentials from spreading before your most major identity begins.
“Astrix has fully visualized the high-risk NHIS and helped us take action without slowing down our business.” -Albert Attias, Senior Director, Workday. Click here to see Workday’s success story.
Audit-enabled compliance, on-demand
Meet compliance requirements with scope permissions, timebox access, and per-agent audit trail. Events are stamped at creation time, and security teams provide immediate evidence of ownership of regulatory frameworks such as NIST, PCI, SOX, and other, and turn board-enabled reports into clicking through exercises.
“Using Astrix gives visibility into over 900 non-human identities and automated ownership tracking, making audit preparation non-problems” – Brandon Wagner, Information Security Director at Mercury. Check out Mercury’s success story here.
Productivity did not decrease
Automated remediation allows engineers to integrate new AI workflows without waiting for manual reviews, but security gets real-time alerts for deviations from the policy. The results: faster releases, fewer fire extinguishing training, and measurable boosts to innovation speed.
“The worthy time was much faster than other tools. What took hours was heavily compressed with Astrix” – Carl Siva, Boomi’s Ciso. Check out Boomi’s success story here.
Conclusion
AI agents unlock historic productivity, but are expanding the identity issues that security teams have wrestled over the years. By treating all agents as NHIs, applying minimal privileges from day one, and leaning towards automation for continuous enforcement, attackers can safely accept their business rather than clean up violations after exploiting forgotten API keys.
Are you ready to see your invisible identity? Visit Astrix.security and schedule a live demo to map all your AI agents and NHIs in minutes.
Source link
