What Is AI Agent?
An AI agent is a software system built around a large language model that can autonomously plan a sequence of steps, invoke external tools or APIs, and take actions toward a goal with limited or no human intervention at each step. Unlike a traditional chatbot that only generates text in response to a prompt, an AI agent can read data, call functions, write to systems, chain multiple tool calls together, and adjust its plan based on intermediate results. Common examples include coding assistants that can execute commands, customer support agents that can issue refunds, and research agents that browse the web and compile reports. To perform these actions, an AI agent typically authenticates to external systems using its own credentials, such as an API key or OAuth token, making it a distinct identity in its own right.
Why It Matters
Every AI agent needs credentials to act, and those credentials are what turn a helpful automation into a security exposure if the agent is manipulated, misconfigured, or compromised. An agent tricked by a prompt injection embedded in a document it reads can be induced to call tools or access data outside its intended scope, and because it acts through its own machine identity, that misuse can be difficult to distinguish from legitimate activity in standard logs. AI agents are proliferating faster than most organizations' identity governance processes can track, adding to a landscape where non-human identities already outnumber human employees by as much as 45 to 1 in some organizations. OWASP's NHI Top 10 (2025) notes that 80% of identity breaches involve a non-human identity, and AI agents represent one of the fastest-growing categories of NHI, often provisioned with broad tool access to make them useful, which is exactly the combination that increases blast radius when something goes wrong.
How Cydenti Helps
Cydenti treats AI agents as first-class non-human identities, discovering the credentials, tools, and data they can reach and tracking how that access is actually used over time. This gives security teams visibility into which agents hold sensitive permissions, whether that access matches their intended purpose, and where an agent's blast radius has grown beyond what was originally scoped. Instead of treating AI agent security as a black box, Cydenti brings it into the same identity risk framework used for service accounts and API keys. Learn more about how Cydenti secures AI agents across your environment.
Explore →Frequently Asked Questions
How is an AI agent different from a chatbot?
A chatbot generates text responses to prompts and stops there. An AI agent goes further by autonomously deciding which tools or APIs to call, executing multi-step plans, and taking real actions in external systems, such as sending emails, modifying records, or running code, often without a human approving each individual step.
Why do AI agents need their own identity?
To call external tools, databases, or APIs, an AI agent must authenticate the same way any software system does, typically with an API key, OAuth token, or service account credential. That credential effectively makes the agent a distinct non-human identity with its own permissions, which must be governed and monitored like any other machine account.
Discover the machine identities you didn't know you had
— in 27 minutes, for free.
NIS2 enforcement begins October 1, 2026. The Audit Flash delivers your complete NHI exposure snapshot — service accounts, orphaned credentials, OAuth grants, AI agents — with a first report in 3 hours. No commitment.
No commitment • No credit card • Data hosted in Europe • Response within 24h