Why identity security is now a board-level imperative
Can your board answer with confidence what your AI agents can actually access right now?
Many can’t. That’s become a competitive liability, not just a compliance risk.
During my time in boardrooms and speaking with customers across the city, I’ve learned that the risks that keep leaders up at night are often the ones nobody saw coming. Right now, AI governance is feeling increasingly like that.
According to Okta’s Businesses at Work 2026 report, 91 per cent of enterprises are already running AI agents. By next year, Gartner predicts 40 per cent of applications will have them integrated.
Yet, our study reveals that while 99 per cent of C-suite leaders say identity governance matters for AI, only 32 per cent currently govern them with the same rigour as human identities – there is a clear gap here
What you can’t see is costing you
Currently, AI agents exist as invisible actors with access to sensitive systems and no clear way to stop them if something goes wrong. Many were deployed casually – shadow AI spun up by business units without formal oversight. Others are managed through outdated credential systems that rotate once a year, if at all.
The threat landscape is accelerating 6.3 times faster than organisations are implementing protections. Without visibility into your agents and their permissions, you’re increasing your risk exposure daily – and your board should know that.
Three questions boards must answer
The organisations pulling ahead are asking three key questions. Where are our agents? What can they connect to? What can they do?
You wouldn’t deploy a team of human employees without understanding their access rights or establishing clear parameters on what they’re permitted to do. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening with AI agents across many organisations.
Governance unlocks innovation
Contrary to some beliefs, AI agent governance doesn’t slow you down. It speeds you up.
Organisations with governance frameworks in place can deploy new capabilities without the bottleneck. They can move faster with confidence and innovate more effectively.
The competitors without those frameworks will find themselves tied up in governance debates, unable to scale AI initiatives because they can’t prove they can control them. That’s not just a risk problem; it’s a business one too.
Discover, protect, govern
First, discover what you actually have. Find your agents – including the shadow AI that employees have deployed without oversight. Once you can see them, you can register them and assign clear ownership.
Second, protect them properly. Define exactly what resources, applications and systems they should access, with scoped, least-privilege permissions that rotate automatically rather than static credentials that never change. Build agent lifecycle controls that adapt as your business evolves.
Third, govern them through a single control plane – such as Okta for AI Agents, now GA. The best organisations aren’t building separate AI governance systems. They’re bringing agents into their existing identity frameworks as first-class identities – with the same oversight as human users and managed through a single unified system. That’s where control becomes scalable.
Thoughtful leaders will win
The threat landscape won’t slow down. Neither will AI adoption. The organisations that will pull away from the pack aren’t the ones moving fastest on AI – they’re the ones that moved thoughtfully. They got governance right and built AI on that foundation.
Because when you’ve got visibility into and control over your agents, true innovation becomes possible without the inherent security risks. That’s where the real competitive advantage lies.
The market is shifting toward leaders who understand that in AI, speed comes from control, not recklessness. The sooner boards recognise that identity security is AI security, the sooner they can unlock AI’s full potential.