The AI Agent Problem Nobody’s Talking About: Privileged Access for Non-Human Workers
Every organization rushing to deploy AI agents is about to run into a problem that looks familiar but is actually something new. At first glance, this appears to be the same old mistake of providing users more access than required. However, upon closer inspection, we find that AI agents are an entirely different type of identity from user accounts and therefore will provide exposures that many companies don’t anticipate.
The security industry has started talking about non-human identity management and agentic AI governance, but mostly at the enterprise level, aimed at organizations with dedicated identity teams and substantial budgets. Mid-sized companies and the MSPs that help manage many of those businesses? They’re plugging AI agents into workflows right now using shared credentials, standing access, and zero review cycle. It’s business as usual, applied to a category of risk that’s anything but.
Why AI Agents Break the Old Rules
To understand what makes this different, look at what you do naturally to stop yourself from being hacked. Humans have some internal limits on how fast we can move. We only work for a limited amount of time each day. During each working day, humans only use a small number of systems. Sometimes, users will say to themselves, “That’s weird” when something seems out of place. For example, “I did not request a password reset”, or “How is it possible that my session is open on a computer that I’ve never logged onto?” That kind of thinking is very primitive, but it does serve as a type of low-level security check.
AI agents have none of those constraints. A compromised agent operates around the clock. It can be duplicated across environments in seconds. It interacts with dozens of systems simultaneously. And it has no gut feeling that something is wrong. There’s no moment where the agent pauses and thinks, “This doesn’t seem right.” It just keeps executing whatever instructions it’s been given, legitimate or not.
In terms of the damage done, one compromised human account may only cause problems with a handful of systems, and over a period of only a few hours, until someone recognizes that something has gone wrong. In contrast, one compromised AI agent may cause damage to all systems that it has access to, and in all environments that it has access to, within an hour or less after the compromise occurs. Therefore, the “blast radius” of one compromised human account is significantly smaller than that of a compromised AI agent.
The Visibility Gap
Most organizations have a system in place to track their employees’ actions; whether through log-in times, access logs or session activity. While imperfect, this provides some type of baseline for security teams to work with.
The sheer amount of activity generated by a single AI agent will render current logging practices ineffective. In today’s world, when an AI agent with wide-ranging permissions accesses 50 different systems within a one-hour period, it is business as usual. However, when that same AI agent accesses 55 systems during the same timeframe, is that an issue? Without specifying the risk signals, no one will be able to determine the differences.
In most mid-market environments, nobody is watching for those signals. These organizations don’t have a security operations center monitoring agent behavior in real time. They have an IT generalist who’s also troubleshooting printer issues and managing endpoint updates. Asking that person to review AI agent access logs on top of everything else is unrealistic.
The Duplication Problem
One aspect of this risk often receives insufficient focus: AI agents can be copied. A human identity is singular. Compromising a single human’s identity credentials provides access to a single individual. An AI agent’s identity may be replicated across various environments. In many cases, replication occurs intentionally.
That means a single compromised credential set can fan out across multiple instances, all operating independently, all carrying the same permissions. Traditional incident response assumes you’re containing one point of compromise. With duplicated agent identities, you might be chasing ten at once, each moving at machine speed. Most mid-sized organizations haven’t begun planning for that scenario. Their identity management was built for a world where one credential equals one person equals one set of sessions to review.
A Closing Window
The principles for managing this risk aren’t a mystery. Just-in-time access, so agents receive permissions only when needed and lose them immediately after. Activity logging scoped to high-risk actions rather than trying to capture everything. Least privilege as a starting posture rather than something to get around to eventually.
None of that is new thinking. What’s new is the urgency. Organizations that built their AI agent deployments on shared service accounts and standing admin access are creating exposure that compounds every week. Each new agent, each new workflow, each new integration adds another identity with broad permissions and minimal oversight.
The organizations that wait until an AI agent with persistent admin rights gets exploited at 3 a.m. on a Sunday are going to learn this the expensive way. And unlike a compromised employee, the agent won’t call anyone to report it. It won’t feel uneasy about something that doesn’t look right. It won’t mention anything strange to a colleague the next morning.
It’ll just keep running.
About the Author: David Bellini is a co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer for CyberFOX. Serving as the Chief Operating Officer and working with his brother Arnie Bellini, the duo spun the ConnectWise software company out of their Tampa-based IT service provider more than four decades ago. David most recently served as the President of International Sales and Operations where he spearheaded and managed the international expansion for ConnectWise. David was a major contributor in the private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquiring ConnectWise in 2019.
About the Company: CyberFOX is a global cybersecurity software provider focused on privileged access management (PAM) and password management for managed service providers (MSPs) and IT professionals. Its flagship products – CyberFOX AutoElevate for PAM, CyberFOX Password Manager, and CyberFOX DNS Filtering – supply critical elements of a comprehensive security strategy. The ability to mitigate risks by controlling user access to critical information strengthens MSPs and IT departments’ security defenses. Prioritizing cybersecurity best practices as a company like CIS critical controls, allows CyberFOX to make complex cybersecurity simple while providing affordable and efficient solutions.
