Your biggest identity risk isn't a human, and your MSSP may not be watching it

For more than a decade, identity security has centered on people. Organizations invested heavily in multifactor authentication (MFA), privileged access management, identity governance, access reviews and user lifecycle management. These investments strengthened security programs and addressed critical risks associated with human users.

They also made a dangerous assumption: Identity risk is primarily a human identity problem.

Today, that assumption is no longer true. The fastest-growing population of privileged identities inside many organizations doesn't appear on an organizational chart, doesn't attend security awareness training and often isn't represented in executive reporting.

These identities are service accounts, API keys, application credentials, cloud workloads, automation platforms and increasingly, artificial intelligence agents. And in many environments, they operate with significantly less oversight than a new employee on their first day.

That's the reality security leaders must confront.

Security programs were designed for human lifecycles. Attackers adapted

Traditional identity programs were built around a predictable model:

The process is governed. Ownership is defined. Accountability exists.

However, non-human identities operate differently. They're often created to solve a business challenge quickly:

• A cloud integration requires access to an application.
• A developer deploys a workload.
• An automation platform needs elevated privileges.
• An AI agent requires cross-platform access to perform meaningful work.

The project launches and the credential remains. Permissions accumulate while ownership fades. Years later, that same identity may still have privileged access to critical systems and sensitive data.

Many organizations have spent years maturing governance for workforce identities, while machine identities have often expanded with limited visibility, ownership or oversight.

Attackers have noticed.

AI didn't create the problem. It's exposing it.

The cybersecurity industry is spending enormous energy discussing AI security. What's receiving far less attention is the identity challenge AI is accelerating.

Every AI agent ultimately operates through credentials, permissions and delegated authority. Whether interacting with Microsoft 365, customer relationship management platforms, source code repositories, financial systems or cloud infrastructure, AI acts through a non-human identity granted access by the organization.

The question isn't simply: "Are AI agents secure?"

The more important question is: "Who is governing the access we've given them?"

For many organizations, the answer remains unclear.

Businesses are moving rapidly to realize the value of AI, while governance programs are working to keep pace. That's understandable. Innovation often moves faster than control frameworks. The challenge is that speed creates exposure.

As AI agents gain access to multiple systems and workflows, organizations may struggle to maintain visibility into what those identities can access, how that access is being used and whether permissions remain appropriate over time.

The MSSP gap few organizations are discussing

One reason this identity challenge continues to grow is that many managed security programs were never designed to address it.

Traditional managed security service provider (MSSP) services evolved around:

• Endpoints
• Networks
• Firewalls
• Security information and event management (SIEM) platforms
• Human user activity

That's where customer demand existed. That's where tooling matured. That's where operational models were built. Non-human identities don't fit neatly into any of those categories.

As a result, many organizations assume their MSSP is helping manage this risk when, in reality, providers may be monitoring downstream symptoms rather than addressing the underlying exposure.

An unusual authentication event may trigger an alert, while suspicious behavior may initiate an investigation and data exfiltration may activate a security control. But the more strategic questions often remain unanswered:

• How many machine identities exist across the environment?
• Which have excessive privileges?
• Which no longer have a legitimate owner?
• Which AI agents have broad delegated authority?
• Which identities pose the greatest business risk if compromised?

These are increasingly some of the most important identity questions an organization can ask. Yet they are rarely central to the managed security conversation.

Cybersecurity has an outcome problem

This challenge extends beyond identity. While cybersecurity programs have become exceptionally effective at measuring activity, they are still evolving in how they measure exposure.

Many providers can report:

• The number of alerts investigated
• Incidents escalated
• Vulnerabilities identified
• Users who completed awareness training

Far fewer can clearly articulate:

• Whether identity-related risk is decreasing
• Whether machine identity exposure is increasing
• Whether privileged access is becoming more tightly controlled
• Whether the overall attack surface is becoming more difficult to exploit

These are outcome-based metrics. And increasingly, they are the metrics security leaders and boards want to understand. Because activities don't reduce risk. Outcomes do.

What clients should expect their MSSP to do differently

Effective MSSPs do not treat non-human identities as a purely technical challenge. They treat them as a governance issue.

They understand:

• Where machine identities exist
• What resources those identities can access
• Who owns them
• Whether privileges remain appropriate
• How credentials are managed and rotated
• How behavior is monitored over time

Most importantly, they apply the same rigor to machine identities as to human identities. Not because a framework mandates it, nor because regulators require it. They apply that scrutiny because they recognize that modern digital businesses increasingly run on non-human access.

As machine identities grow in volume and influence, governance must keep pace.