Published on the 14/10/2026 | Written by Heather Wright

The agents are here. The governance is not…

AI agents have moved from pilots and proof-of-concept into the enterprise mainstream.

At least, that’s according to new research from SailPoint, which found 79 percent of organisations now run AI agents in production environments. The findings are drawn from a survey of 340 senior identity, IT, cybersecurity and risk leaders globally, and suggest autonomous software has become part of day to day business operations.

“Security teams recognise the risk of over-permissioned agents, but legacy ticketing workflows prevent them from auditing and scoping non-human entitlements dynamically at scale.”

But, despite their apparent ubiquity, only two percent of organisations have deployed purpose-built tools designed to govern and secure those digital workers who are making autonomous decisions, querying critical databases and executing transactions on behalf of the business.

Nam Lam, SailPoint ANZ group vice president, says Australian and New Zealand organisations are embracing AI at speed, but many are managing AI agents using controls originally designed for human users.

“Australian and New Zealand organisations are rapidly embracing AI to drive innovation and efficiency, which is a testament to the region’s agility,” Lam says.

“However, our latest report reveals that 79% of organisations globally are managing non-human identities including AI agents with legacy identity security controls. This isn’t just a technical gap, it’s a significant business risk that leaves the door wide open for breaches.”

The Horizons of Identity Security 2026-2027 report found AI agents now represent 22 percent of all non-human accounts, underlining how rapidly autonomous systems are becoming part of enterprise operations.

Yet most organisations are still relying on technology never designed for that purpose. SailPoint says 85 percent continue to use either legacy identity platforms or platform-native controls, such as on-premises directories or manually maintained roles, rather than systems developed specifically for cloud, machine and AI-agent identities.

Built for people, not AI agents

That gap becomes clearer when organisations compare how they manage people versus software.

For decades, identity-management systems were built around employees. Staff joined the organisation, changed roles and eventually left. Access rights could be reviewed and updated through established processes.

AI agents operate differently.

They can work continuously, access multiple systems simultaneously and take action without direct human intervention. As their numbers grow, organisations are discovering the controls built for people don’t always translate neatly to autonomous systems.

While 87 percent of respondents rated their human identity-management capabilities as capable or better, fewer than half, 43 percent, said they had mature processes for managing agentic access. More than half, 54 percent, remain at the lowest maturity level for AI-agent identity security.

The report suggests many organisations are still struggling with the basics.

Only 15 percent of respondents said they could provision non-human access in real time. Another 15 percent reported mature capabilities for detecting shadow AI deployments, while just 43 percent said they felt highly prepared to provide evidence during an AI-related audit inquiry.

Lam says those challenges are particularly relevant in Australia and New Zealand, where many organisations are still building foundational identity-management capabilities.

“In Asia Pacific, with 37% of organisations still at the earliest stage of identity maturity, the immediate priority for ANZ leaders must be to extend their identity security strategy to discover, govern, and protect every single identity; human and non-human, because when something goes wrong, the tough questions will come from the board and local regulators.”

Practical headaches

The survey found organisations are less concerned about AI hallucinations than more conventional governance and security issues.

Data leakage and exposure topped the list of concerns, cited by 35 percent of respondents. Excessive permissions and access-control issues followed at 30 percent, while 27 percent pointed to autonomous actions occurring without human oversight. Hallucinations were cited by 17 percent.

Those concerns are also creating practical headaches for security teams.

Excessive permissions and privilege creep emerged as the most common challenge in managing AI-agent identities, followed by visibility and discovery issues and the ability to monitor and audit agent activity.

“Security teams recognise the risk of over-permissioned agents, but legacy ticketing workflows prevent them from auditing and scoping non-human entitlements dynamically at scale.”

The report also highlights what it terms a ‘pronounced awareness gap’ and a significant disconnect between leadership awareness and operational execution. “Across multiple survey measures, broad sentiment questions yielded high optimism, while granular technical questions exposed critical gaps,” the report says.

“This is not simply a matter of leaders being overly optimistic; it reveals a deeper awareness gap. For many leaders, ‘identity security’ still primarily means securing the human workforce, and their confidence reflects years of investment in maturing those legacy processes. The data shows this confidence is misplaced in the agentic era, exposing a fundamental lack of awareness of what ‘good’ now looks like.

“It is a strategy-execution gap where the ambition to secure the autonomous enterprise has outpaced the operational ability, and even the vocabulary, to do so.”