AI Agents Drive New Security Demands

Artificial intelligence agents have rapidly become a force inside enterprises, creating a surge of new, nonhuman identities. While adoption has grown quickly, oversight has not kept pace. More than 80% of organizations now use agents, but only 40% actually manage them, said Steve Bradford, senior vice president and general manager for EMEA at SailPoint. That lack of control is leading to unauthorized access and exposing sensitive data.

See Also: Identity-Based Attacks – When MFA Isn’t Enough

The challenge, Bradford said, lies not only in securing agents but also achieving faster returns on identity investments. Many enterprises remain stuck in early maturity phases. He called for broader visibility across the long tail of applications to improve control and ROI.

“More than 80% of companies that are using agents say they have had unauthorized access to data, and yet they’re still at a stage where they don’t quite know how to take advantage of the benefits of those agents and secure them at the same time,” he said.

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit London, Bradford also discussed:

• How agentic AI shifts identity security from humans to machines;
• The importance of managing SaaS applications at scale;
• SailPoint’s efforts to close the skills gap through online resources and in-person training.

Bradford leads EMEA go-to-market teams at Sailpoint. He has more than 30 years of IT experience, including nearly 25 years in enterprise software and SaaS. He has held executive roles at IBM, SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Automation Anywhere.