Managing Human & Autonomous Identities in the Age of AI

For decades, Identity Governance focused almost entirely on human users – employees, contractors, partners. However, today, enterprises are facing a rapidly growing population of autonomous identities, including non-human entities such as bots, service accounts, APIs, RPA, AI agents, and machine identities that act, decide, and scale independently.

Artificial Intelligence has not just changed how systems operate. It has fundamentally changed who holds access.

The Identity Shift We Can No Longer Ignore

Modern enterprises now manage:

• Human identities with complex lifecycles
• Non-human identities that outnumber humans by 10x–50x
• AI-driven entities that request, use, and rotate access dynamically

Yet many organizations still rely on:

• Static role-based access models
• Manual certifications
• Periodic reviews are designed for predictable human behavior

This mismatch is creating visibility gaps, security blind spots, and compliance risks that traditional IGA tools struggle to address.

Why Legacy Identity Governance Is Failing for Autonomous Identities

Legacy governance fails not because it is outdated, but because the identity landscape has evolved faster than governance models.

Key challenges include:

• No ownership clarity for non-human identities
• Inability to track the intent and behavior of autonomous access
• Over-permissioned service accounts lingering for years
• Manual controls applied to machine-speed operations

In an AI-driven environment, governance must move from static control to continuous, contextual oversight.

Managing Autonomous Identities Requires a New Mindset

Modern identity governance must answer new questions:

• Who created this identity?
• Why does it exist?
• What decisions can it make?
• How is its access justified, monitored, and revoked?

This is not just a tooling problem.
It is a problem of strategy, architecture, and leadership.

Voices of Strength – Women in IAM Webinar

To explore this topic in depth, we hosted a powerful session under the Voices of Strength – Women in IAM Webinar initiative.

This session, delivered as part of the Voices of Strength – Women in IAM Webinar initiative. It was delivered by Kashish Mirza, and it was built on a simple but powerful reality:

Identity governance was designed for humans – but AI has introduced autonomous identities that operate at machine speed.

Kashish brings clarity to one of the most misunderstood shifts in IAM today – explaining:

• The real risks of unmanaged non-human identities
• Why governance must evolve beyond traditional models
• Practical perspectives for IAM, security, and compliance leaders

👉 Watch the recorded session here:

Why This Conversation Matters

As AI adoption accelerates, identity becomes the control plane of trust.
Organizations that fail to modernize identity governance will struggle with:

• Security incidents
• Audit failures
• Loss of control over autonomous access

Those who adapt will build resilient, scalable, and future-ready IAM programs.

A Commitment to Stronger Voices

The Voices of Strength – Women in Webinar initiative exists to:

• Amplify expert voices in cybersecurity and IAM
• Create inclusive knowledge-sharing platforms
• Inspire the next generation of identity leaders

This session is one more step in that journey.

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Join the Conversation

What challenges are you seeing with non-human or autonomous identities in your organization?
Are legacy governance models still holding you back?

Share your thoughts in the comments and continue learning with IAM for Beginners and Voices of Strength.

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