AI Agents as a Third Identity Class: Why Service Accounts Aren't Enough for Autonomous Systems
AI Agents as a Third Identity Class: Why Service Accounts Aren't Enough for Autonomous Systems AI Agents as a Third Identity Class: Why Service Accounts Aren't Enough for Autonomous Systems Date: 04 November 2026 Executive Summary Autonomous AI agents can interpret goals, select tools, retain context, delegate work, and take actions across systems. Treating them as ordinary service accounts creates a control gap: the credential may be identifiable, but the agent's intent, delegated authority, runtime state, and tool decisions are not adequately represented. The security decision is straightforward: classify autonomous agents as a distinct identity class and govern them with controls that combine workload identity, human or system delegation, task-scoped authorization, tool-level policy enforcement, and tamper-resistant auditability. A service account may remain part of the implementation, but it should not be the entire security model. Cont...