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ConductorOne, an AI-native identity security platform, released its third annual Future of Identity Report based on a survey of 508 IT and security leaders at U.S. organizations with over 1,000 employees. The findings reveal a rapid shift to production use of autonomous AI agents in enterprise IT and security operations, with 95% of respondents now running such agents—while highlighting widening governance gaps, persistent identity-related breaches, and the explosive growth of non-human identities.
The report marks a structural evolution in enterprise operations: AI agents have moved beyond experimentation to perform real work autonomously, often with delegated access to critical systems and data. This agentic enterprise model sees software entities acting alongside humans, executing tasks through identity-based permissions.
“The next wave of AI adoption will not be driven just by engineering teams,” said Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder of ConductorOne. “It will be driven by every employee connecting personal AI assistants to enterprise systems. When thousands of users are delegating real work to autonomous agents, you need identity infrastructure that governs which tools an agent can reach, what operations it can perform, and whose authority it acts under. Without that, you do not have an AI strategy. You have an access control crisis.”
Identity-related incidents remain prevalent, with phishing, social engineering, malware, and ransomware as leading causes. Traditional governance models built for human approval workflows struggle to match the speed and scale of AI-driven operations, leaving gaps in visibility, privilege management, auditability, and credential lifecycle.
Non-human identities now outnumber human ones in nearly half of organizations, yet comprehensive visibility remains limited to just over one-fifth of respondents. This identity sprawl significantly expands the attack surface.
Organizations are responding aggressively: 91% have boosted IAM investments to address AI-driven risks. Nearly half (45%) already use IAM tools for non-human identities, with another 45% planning implementation within the year. The trend points to unified governance as the new standard, encompassing human, non-human, and AI identities to enable secure, scalable agentic operations.
The full 2026 Future of Identity Report is available for download at conductorone.com.
This survey underscores the urgent need for modern identity platforms capable of governing the agentic enterprise, ensuring security keeps pace with AI innovation.
About ConductorOne
ConductorOne is the first AI-native identity security platform that protects every identity: human, non-human, and AI. Using a broad base of out-of-the-box connectors, powerful automation, and platform-level AI capabilities, it centralizes identity and access visibility, enforces fine-grained access controls, enables just-in-time access, and automates user access reviews across all apps and infrastructure. Organizations can efficiently and securely manage the entire lifecycle of identities and streamline compliance tasks—all from a single, quick-to-deploy platform. ConductorOne is easy to use, connects to all of your apps, and is AI powered—we make securing identity effortless regardless of environmental complexity. ConductorOne is trusted by forward-thinking enterprises like DigitalOcean, Instacart, Ramp, and Zscaler.
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