Lani Leuthvilay
February 18, 2025
The digital enterprise landscape is undergoing a fundamental transformation. A recent Gartner report titled What Is the Difference Between Machine IAM and Nonhuman Identity? highlights a critical challenge that security professionals and enterprise architects must urgently address: the exponential growth of machine identities and AI agents and their impact on authorization strategies.
Understanding the New Identity Landscape
Traditional identity and access management focused primarily on human users accessing applications directly. Today’s enterprise architecture tells a different story. Organizations now manage a complex ecosystem of non-human identities (NHI) and machine identities that include service accounts, APIs, containers, and, more recently, AI agents. This shift represents one of the most pressing risk management challenges organizations face.
The Authorization Challenge
Legacy authorization systems, designed for simpler times, are struggling to meet modern demands. Today’s access patterns are intricate and interconnected:
- Machine-to-machine communications form the backbone of modern applications
- AI agents operate with increasing autonomy, requiring dynamic access rights that must take into account the human identity it serves
- Microservices and containers create complex interaction patterns
- Automated processes and RPA systems act on behalf of business functions
Following the Data: The Human Connection
While the proliferation of machine identities continues, it’s crucial to remember that human users remain the ultimate consumers of data. Every machine interaction, AI agent operation, and automated process typically serves to deliver or transform data for human consumption. This creates a critical need for authorization systems that can:
Track and control access across entire interaction chains while maintaining visibility into data flows. Modern solutions must enforce consistent policies regardless of access paths and provide comprehensive audit trails connecting machine activities back to human users.
Controlling AI Agents with Identity-aware
The emergence of AI agents introduces unprecedented authorization challenges. These sophisticated actors require dynamic access based on context and learning patterns. Modern authorization must evolve to provide Dynamic policy evaluation that responds to context while maintaining fine-grained access controls. Again, it cannot be stressed that the ultimate consumers of AI agents are human users, and the context of human identity must be factored into the access. For example, AI agents should be unable to retrieve sensitive information on behalf of the user who was never authorized to see it.
Business Impact and Risk
Organizations that fail to modernize their authorization approach face mounting challenges. Security vulnerabilities from inadequately controlled machine access, compliance violations, and operational inefficiencies are just the beginning. Perhaps more critically, organizations risk limiting their ability to scale AI and automation initiatives safely.
The Path to Modern Authorization
Moving forward requires a strategic approach that addresses both current and emerging needs. Modern authorization solutions must deliver centralized policy management across all identity types while providing the granularity needed for machine-scale access patterns.
Enterprise architects and security professionals should begin by assessing their current authorization capabilities against modern requirements. Identifying gaps in machine identity and AI agent access management becomes crucial for developing an effective modernization roadmap.
Taking Action
The time to modernize authorization is now. Organizations need solutions that can address access control to:
- Handle both human and machine identities seamlessly
- Provide dynamic, context-aware access controls
- Maintain comprehensive audit trails across all access paths
- Scale to meet machine-level access demands
- Ensure consistent policy enforcement regardless of access pattern
Looking Ahead
The proliferation of machine identities and AI agents represents a fundamental shift in enterprise authorization requirements. Organizations that modernize their approach now will be better positioned to leverage emerging technologies while maintaining security and compliance. Those that delay risk falling behind in both security capabilities and operational efficiency.
The path forward is clear: implement modern authorization solutions that can handle the complexity of today’s identity landscape while preparing for tomorrow’s challenges. The question isn’t whether to modernize – it’s how quickly you can make the transition to ensure your organization stays secure and competitive in an increasingly automated world.
Contact PlainID to learn more about how PlainID can help you address access control for NHI and AI agents.
