Non-human identity (agent identity)
Accounts, keys and tokens used by software rather than people: service accounts, API keys, CI tokens and, more and more, AI agents.
In most companies they outnumber employees, and they are rarely reviewed: keys never expire, owners leave, permissions only grow. AI agents add identities that act on someone’s behalf, which raises the question security questionnaires now ask: whose permissions does the agent use, and can you tell its actions apart from a person’s in the logs? Short-lived tokens, one identity per agent and an owner for each are the baseline.
Related terms
- Confused deputy (AI agents): A program with broad permissions is tricked into using them for someone who should not have them; agents with shared service accounts are a common case.
- OAuth: A standard that lets an app act on a user’s account elsewhere (mail, calendar, files) without ever seeing the password.
- Secrets management (leaked API keys): Keeping API keys, passwords and tokens out of code and chats, in a store with access control, rotation and audit.
- A2A (Agent2Agent protocol): An open protocol for one AI agent to hand a task to another agent, possibly from another vendor, and follow it until it is done.
