AI Agent Security: Building Autonomous Trust at Machine Speed
A Seven-Part Thought Leadership Series by Okta
We've entered the era of AI agents. Agents are the new application layer, running in production, handling data pipelines, security workflows, SaaS integrations, and operational tech. As business logic migrates from apps to agents, every risk becomes an identity problem: who's acting, under what authority, with what lineage, and how fast can you revoke access when context shifts?
The answer isn't another control layer. It's IAM rebuilt for autonomy: one that evaluates context continuously, tracks delegation across domains, and gives developers the primitives to build secure agent workflows. Built on OpenID Foundation's agentic identity guidance and OWASP's non-human identity framework.
The Series
1. AI security: IAM delivered at agent velocity
Human-centric security models fail at machine speed. On July 18, 2025, an AI agent at Replit erased 1,206 executive records from a live database in seconds. While a typical app performs 50 operations per minute, AI agents execute 5,000. Consent-based models collapse under agent velocity. Policy-based authorization, enforced in real time, is the only viable path forward.
2. AI Security: When Authorization Outlives Intent
Delegated authority becomes a liability when credentials persist far beyond their intended scope. The Salesloft Drift breach in August 2025 compromised 700+ organizations via OAuth tokens that should have been revoked months earlier. With non-human identities now outnumbering humans 144 to 1, "authorization drift" has become a critical security gap.
3. AI Security: When Your Agent Crosses Multiple Independent Systems, Who Vouches for It?
No single identity provider spans every system your agent touches. With 69% of organizations expressing concerns about non-human identity attacks and AI agents operating at 5,000 operations per minute across multiple trust domains, federated identity must be verifiable and revocable in real time.
4. Control the Chain, Secure the System: Fixing AI Agent Delegation
Recursive delegation creates new attack surfaces. Recent security research shows the risks: Unit 42 disclosed the Agent Session Smuggling technique, Johann Rehberger demonstrated Cross-Agent Privilege Escalation, and EchoLeak (CVE-2025-32711) exposed how tool-use agents can be manipulated. All exploit the same gap: permissions that don't narrow at each hop.
5. When your Agent Controls Physical Systems: Needing Authorization as the Safety Layer [Coming soon]
Identity and authorization become critical safety mechanisms when AI agents interact with cyber-physical systems where errors cause physical harm.
6. When One Agent Has More Access Than Half the Team: Needing Shared Accountability Without Shared Privileges [Coming soon]
Agents accumulate privileges that exceed individual human access. How do you establish accountability without shared privileges?
7. Identity as the Operating System for Autonomous Trust: How Okta Unifies Agent Security [Coming soon]
The capstone: how Okta's Identity Security Fabric becomes the control plane for autonomous systems.
All statistics and incidents are sourced in individual posts.
