IBM Introduces Identity and Control for AI Agents, Securing Frontier Intelligence for the Enterprise

IBM Introduces Identity and Control for AI Agents, Securing Frontier Intelligence for the Enterprise

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IBM Introduces Identity and Control for AI Agents, Securing Frontier Intelligence for the Enterprise

• Enterprises are deploying agents faster than they can verify them. HashiCorp Vault uses Agent Identity to give each agent a governed identity
• Verified agents still need limits on access. Vault extends its established secrets management to AI agents, built to enforce least-privilege access and enable real-time revocation when an agent attempts an unauthorized action
• Enterprises can’t scale agents they can’t see, test or account for. IBM watsonx Orchestrate is designed to unify discovery, containment, and evaluation across Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry and Google Gemini

Oct 27, 2026

ATLANTA, GA, Oct. 27, 2026 -- At TechXchange 2026, IBM (NYSE: IBM ) is announcing new capabilities to help developers, IT and security teams put AI agents to work across business systems with clear authority and accountability. IBM brings together agent discovery, verified identities, access controls and performance evaluation to help organizations understand who owns each agent, control what it can access, and trace its actions across existing applications and infrastructure.

According to Gartner , by 2028 the average Fortune 500 enterprise will use over 150,000 AI agents. But only 13% of organizations believe that they have the right AI agent governance in place [1]. Persistent credentials, unclear ownership and disconnected controls make it harder to govern agents as they interact with other agents, invoke tools and act across teams, platforms and clouds.

“The winners in enterprise AI are changing how their business runs, not simply adding more AI to it,” said Dinesh Nirmal, Senior Vice President, IBM Software . “For agents to take on real work across the systems a company depends on, it requires an AI operating model – one that connects agents to the business’s data, applications and infrastructure and runs them with the same discipline as its most critical systems. Build trust and control into that model, and agents stop being a technology and become a way of doing business.”

Today’s announcements extend IBM’s portfolio to deliver an AI operating model of four essential systems working together: agents, data, automation and hybrid infrastructure. This starts with the trust and control every agent needs – a verified identity, only the access it needs, and one place to discover, secure and evaluate agents regardless of where they were built.

Extending HashiCorp Vault to AI agents

HashiCorp Vault manages the secrets and credentials that applications and services use to access business systems. It provides that control through centrally managed secrets, automated rotation for supported credentials, and dynamically generated credentials that expire or can be revoked. These capabilities help reduce the time exposed credentials remain usable and limit access to the permissions configured for each role.

HashiCorp Vault already secures non-human identities for organizations including ABN AMRO, Adobe, athenahealth, BBVA, BlackRock, Canva, Duke Energy, Expedia, London Stock Exchange, Starbucks, Swiss Federal Railways and Target, across systems that process billions of dollars in transactions [2]. HashiCorp will now extend those capabilities to AI agents, issuing secured, short-lived credentials that limit each agent to what it needs.

Establishing agent identity and accountability

AI agents are a growing class of non-human identity, alongside applications and services. As they begin acting across business systems, enterprises need a clear record of who owns each agent and what authority it has been granted. HashiCorp is combining governed agent identity with credential controls to help organizations delegate work with defined authority and accountability.

When used with HashiCorp Vault, Agent Identity establishes the authoritative record for each agent, such as who owns it, its lifecycle status and the authority it has been granted. Built to extend existing identity and security investments, it shares relevant identity and authorization context with Vault’s credential controls – ultimately enforcing least-privilege access and enabling real-time revocation when an agent attempts an unauthorized action.

Controlling agent credentials and access

Identifying an agent is only the start. Enterprises also need to control the credentials it uses to reach databases, applications and cloud services – and how long those credentials remain valid.

As agents invoke tools and act across business systems, their credentials become a critical security boundary. An agent with a long-lived, overprivileged credential can put systems and data at risk if it’s compromised or acts outside its intended task. Enterprises need to establish what each agent’s job is, limit the access it receives and revoke that access when circumstances change.

These controls extend beyond initial authentication. If an agent attempts to retrieve information or perform actions outside its approved permissions, the access can be denied and session revoked in real time to prevent unauthorized activity. Vault's short-lived credentials and least-privilege controls can further restrict what an agent accesses and the duration of those permissions.

Additional capabilities include:

Vault 2.2 gives agents their own secured accounts, automatically renews their credentials and incorporates post-quantum encryption for quantum-era threats.

Secure Hub (public preview) gives companies centralized visibility across their Vault environments to make it easier to understand operational health, usage and security resources.

At TechXchange, client speakers will share how they use Vault to secure enterprise applications, workloads and AI agents

athenahealth: Automating certificate management with Vault’s PKI engine.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Applying IBM Verify and Vault to AI agent identity, just-in-time access, dynamic secrets and auditability.

Optum: Using Vault Radar to detect exposed secrets and Boundary for just-in-time, identity-based access.

Seven-Eleven Japan: Centralizing and encrypting secrets with Vault Enterprise and detecting hardcoded secrets with Vault Radar.

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