AI agents: A breach waiting to happen?

You’ve likely heard of generative AI. But what about agentic AI? According to Gartner, this emerging technology is poised to become a strategic priority for many organizations in the coming year, with predictions that 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI by 2028.

At first glance, agentic AI promises significant gains in productivity and efficiency. However, much like the cloud revolution—which brought both groundbreaking innovations and its share of security challenges—agentic AI introduces a new set of pressing security concerns that businesses need to address urgently. 

In this blog, we’ll explore why managing AI agents with proper IAM is the key to protecting your organization from a catastrophic security breach.

Defining agentic AI 

For those unfamiliar with the term, let’s take a moment to explore agentic AI and how it differs from familiar tools like ChatGPT and Bard. Unlike traditional AI, which typically requires continuous input or instructions to function, agentic AI is designed to operate autonomously. It makes decisions, takes actions, and adapts by learning from its environment, allowing businesses to automate more complex tasks without the need for ongoing human oversight.

Here’s a closer look at the key features that define agentic AI:

• Autonomous: Agentic AI can perform routine tasks and make decisions without needing constant supervision. This makes it ideal for automating day-to-day operations and freeing up your team to focus on higher-level, strategic work. The result? Increased efficiency and productivity across the board.
• Strategic: Agentic AI is designed to work towards specific objectives, just like a project manager with clear targets. Whether it’s optimizing your operations, improving customer experience, or boosting revenue, these systems are laser-focused on delivering results. They align with your business goals, ensuring that every action they take is aimed at achieving measurable outcomes.
• Continuous learning: Agentic AI doesn’t just complete tasks—it gets better over time. As it interacts with its environment and learns from feedback, it continuously improves its performance. This makes it more efficient and effective the longer it operates, driving even better results for your business as it adapts.
• Independent: Agentic AI can anticipate needs and identify potential problems without prompt. For example, it could predict supply chain disruptions, suggest alternative solutions, or even forecast changes in the market—acting as a strategic advisor that keeps your business agile and prepared for what’s next.

To put things in context, let’s take the example of a busy salesperson juggling multiple accounts and leads—tracking communications, scheduling follow-ups, analyzing data and so forth. While tools like scheduling apps and generative AI can certainly help manage the workload, they still require regular input to function effectively.

Agentic AI, however, operates proactively and autonomously. For that same salesperson, this means AI could automatically review their calendar, prioritize high-value leads, schedule outreach, and create personalized deals based on customer behavior—without any prompt or supervision. This allows the salesperson to focus on higher-level strategy and relationship-building, while AI handles the time-consuming tasks.

Agentic AI: The security risks 

Agentic AI is set to power the next workplace revolution. However, as we’ve noted, rolling out this technology will by no means be a walk in the park. The thing is, an AI ‘agent’ is, in essence, a non-human employee. It performs tasks, accesses data, jumps about corporate systems and so on.

If the agent’s privileges, movements and actions are not managed and monitored closely, well, that’s a data breach waiting to happen. 

Think of it this way; we don’t give employees unrestricted access to every system or piece of data. Permissions are carefully tailored to their roles, responsibilities, and the context of their work to ensure security and compliance.

The same principle must apply to AI agents. Just like human identities, they are susceptible to identity and access management risks.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s at stake.

Sensitive data exposure

AI agents operate autonomously, handling and processing sensitive data to achieve their goals. In healthcare, for example, they may review patient records to suggest treatments, while in finance, they could analyze transactions to detect fraud. Without strong controls, however, these agents risk exposing private information. 

This might happen through unintended access, such as an AI agent accessing data it shouldn’t, or through misconfigurations where an agent is granted broader permissions than necessary. In the worst-case scenario, these agents could be targeted by cyberattacks designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the system, allowing attackers to gain unauthorized access to critical information.

Compliance pitfalls

Like their human counterparts, AI agents must adhere to data protection laws like the GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA. As all organizations know, failure to comply with these regulations can result in hefty penalties and reputational damage. 

Without IAM, the propensity for AI agents to violate compliance policies is exponential. Because they operate autonomously, these agents could access, use and share sensitive information—with the organization having little to no way of knowing there’s been a breach until it’s too late. 

Growing attack surface

Because AI agents interact with critical infrastructure and confidential data, they’re innately tempting targets for cybercriminals. As highlighted in OWASP’s Top 10 Risks for Large Language Models (LLMs), AI systems are vulnerable to a range of attack vectors that can be exploited by malicious actors. Whether it’s injecting malicious data, exploiting weaknesses in algorithms, or manipulating the AI’s decision-making process, the risk cannot be understated.

Without a strong Identity and Access Management (IAM) framework in place, the consequences of a successful attack could be severe. Hackers could gain unauthorized access to your organization’s critical systems, steal sensitive customer data, monitor internal operations, or even deploy advanced attacks that compromise your entire infrastructure. 

Ethics and accountability 

As AI agents take on more responsibility, they start making decisions that can have a major impact on users, finances, and even public health. However, unlike humans, these systems lack the ability to make nuanced ethical judgments. Without rigorous governance in place, there’s a real plausibility that these systems will make decisions that are efficient but biased or harmful—leading to unintended consequences that damage trust and accountability.

Moreover, when AI operates with such limited oversight, tracking its actions becomes a challenge. If something goes wrong—whether it’s a data breach, operational failure, or an ethical misstep—organizations will struggle to understand what happened or how to fix it. 

Deploying a holistic security framework to secure AI agents 

The risks associated with AI agents are significant and cannot be overlooked. However, the good news is that as AI technology evolves, so too does the development of advanced security solutions to mitigate these challenges. At Polymer, for example, we’ve created a comprehensive security framework to address the compliance and data leakage risks inherent in agentic AI. 

Here’s how our solution can help you unlock the full potential of AI agents while safeguarding your data and ensuring compliance.

1. Centralized data access control: We provide a centralized data access control framework that allows you to manage who and what AI agents can access. By securing data in a central repository, we ensure AI agents only interact with the data necessary for their tasks, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
2. Data classification and protection: Our solution enables precise data classification for both unstructured and structured data sources. This ensures that AI agents access only relevant data for their roles, with robust protection measures in place to keep sensitive information secure. 
3. Customizable permissions for AI agents: AI agents require tailored permissions, just like employees. Polymer’s platform allows you to customize permissions based on the specific tasks of each AI agent, ensuring they have just-in-time access only to the systems and data they need, when they need it.
4. Real-time monitoring and auditing: Polymer offers real-time tracking of AI agent activities, ensuring full visibility into their behavior. Our auditing capabilities generate detailed logs, allowing you to trace actions and identify any suspicious activity to prevent potential issues before they escalate.
5. Security built into every step: Security is seamlessly integrated into every step of the AI agent workflow. From data retrieval to decision-making, we incorporate essential security measures like data encryption, tokenization, and access controls, ensuring that sensitive data is protected at all times.
6. Scalability for growing needs: As your AI capabilities scale, so too must your security. Polymer’s solution is designed to grow with your needs, offering scalable infrastructure that adapts to increasing data volumes and evolving risks. 

Secure your AI workforce for long-term success

AI agents are poised to revolutionize the workplace, transforming how organizations operate and innovate. But with great power comes great responsibility. To truly harness their potential, businesses must integrate security from the very beginning. Polymer provides the tools to do just that—enabling you to embrace the full power of AI agents while ensuring your data stays protected and compliant.

Protect your AI workforce and future-proof your operations—request a demo today.