How to give an AI agent its own identity

Why can an agent not just use my account?

When an agent runs on your personal token, every system sees you. It cannot tell the agent from the person. If the agent deletes a record, the log says you did it.

A personal token also carries all your permissions. The agent needs a small slice of them for its task. Everything else is risk with no benefit.

There is a second problem. When you leave the company, your token is revoked and the agent breaks. Or worse, the agent keeps running on a key nobody remembers. Both outcomes come from the same mistake: the agent never had an identity of its own.

What does an agent identity actually contain?

An agent identity is a record that says which agent this is. It sits in a directory or an identity graph, like a user account does.

At minimum, the record holds four things:

• A stable identifier for the agent.
• A named owner who is accountable for it.
• A description of its purpose and the systems it may reach.
• A lifecycle state, so it can be paused, reviewed and retired.

Credentials are then issued to that identifier, not to a person. Every action is logged against it. Platforms differ in how they build the record. Okta for AI Agents uses Universal Directory. Microsoft Entra Agent ID creates an agent object with a sponsor. NewCore resolves a person's accounts across identity providers, directories and HR systems into one record and links their agents to it.

Step one: find the agents you already have

You cannot give identities to agents you do not know about. Most companies already run more agents than anyone listed. Engineers connect coding assistants to repositories. Analysts wire chat tools into spreadsheets. Teams install MCP servers on laptops.

Discovery tools read identity providers, SaaS audit logs, code, CI/CD pipelines and endpoints. They look for tokens and behaviour that belong to agents. Astrix Security describes four discovery methods, including endpoint and browser sensors. Silverfort reads Entra ID and Okta through read-only APIs. Clutch Security connects to clouds, SaaS, code, vaults and AI platforms.

Do this before you buy anything else. The inventory tells you how big the problem is and which teams to talk to first.

Step two: assign an owner to every agent

An owner is the person who answers for the agent. They approve changes to its access. They are the contact when something goes wrong. They confirm the agent is still needed at review time.

Pick the person who deployed the agent unless there is a reason not to. Several platforms trace that link for you. Clutch Security traces each agent from the person who deployed it. Token Security gives each agent a defined human owner. SailPoint Entro maps every agent, NHI and secret to an owner.

Set a rule: an agent without an owner is suspended after a grace period. That one rule clears out most abandoned agents within a quarter.

Step three: replace standing secrets with short-lived credentials

A standing credential works until someone revokes it. A static API key in an environment file is the classic case. It is also what attackers look for first.

Replace it with a credential issued for the task and expired soon after. The agent authenticates with its own identity and asks for access each time. If a token leaks, it is useless within minutes.

The strongest pattern is that the agent never sees the tool's credential at all. A gateway or broker attaches the credential to the request on the agent's behalf. Aembit calls this secretless credential exchange. NewCore states that the agent never holds the tool's own credential. Idira obtains MCP access tokens for agents and manages rotation.

Step four: keep the agent inside its person's permissions

Many agents act for a specific person. A mail assistant works for one manager. A coding agent works for one engineer.

In those cases the agent should never exceed what that person can do. This is on-behalf-of delegation. The request carries both identities, and downstream systems check both. If the agent hands work to a sub-agent, the chain should stay visible.

Ask vendors to show you a log line for a delegated call. You should see the agent, the person and the decision in one place.

Step five: check actions at run time

Sign-in checks happen once. An agent may run for hours and change course many times. So the control that matters most is the check on each action.

A gateway in front of tools can evaluate every call against policy. The verdict is usually one of three: allow, ask or deny. The ask path sends the call to a person who approves or declines.

That human step is where products differ most. NewCore routes risky calls to a named approver who confirms with device biometrics, and an agent can never approve its own action. Silverfort's MCP Gateway can step a call up to a human. Several others enforce policy but do not describe a human approval step. See the runtime column in the standings.

Step six: keep the record honest

Identities drift. Owners change roles, projects end, and agents keep running. Schedule reviews where owners confirm each agent's purpose and access.

Keep one audit trail for tool calls, sessions and approvals. When something goes wrong, that trail is how you answer what happened. Make sure you can revoke one agent fast, without touching the person it served.

How does this fit with Okta or Entra?

Your identity provider still signs people in. An agent identity layer runs alongside it, never instead of it. The layer adds the pieces that sign-in does not cover: discovery, per-call checks and human approval.

Okta and Microsoft both now cover parts of agent identity. Read what Okta for AI Agents and Microsoft Entra Agent ID already cover before deciding what to add.

Where should I start this week?

Run discovery on one business unit. List every agent you find with a proposed owner. Pick the three agents with the broadest standing credentials and move them to short-lived access.

Then choose one high-risk action, such as deleting records or sending money. Put a human approval in front of it. That gives you a working pattern you can repeat across the rest of the estate.

A short checklist

• Every agent has its own identifier, not a person's token.
• Every agent has a named owner in the directory.
• No agent holds a credential that outlives its task.
• Delegated calls show both the agent and the person.
• Each tool call is checked against policy when it happens.
• Risky actions wait for a named person to approve.
• One agent can be revoked without disrupting anyone else.

If you can tick all seven, your agents have real identities. If you cannot, the gaps tell you what to fix next and which criteria in our scoring method to weigh most.