Your Identity Governance Wasn't Built for AI Agents
CIO, Friday, August 21st, 2026
CIO contrasts CIO enthusiasm for agent democratization with CISO alarm over non-human identity governance.
The author describes sitting in on a CIO conversation about the democratization of agents, putting large language models directly in employees' hands connected to business logic so people could build on top of them. The mood was bullish, with CIOs sketching what their teams could do with agents they trained and managed themselves.
Soon after, the author was in a room full of CISOs discussing non-human identity, and the contrast was stark.
The article argues AI agents fit neither the human nor the machine identity model cleanly. It concludes security teams need governance that can adapt as agents act rather than static entitlement reviews.