Exabeam, the leader in behavior intelligence for the agentic enterprise, today released new research showing that AI agents have become a new insider risk priority for enterprise security teams. Nearly half (48%) of security leaders surveyed rank AI agents operating with excessive, compromised, or unintended access as the greatest threat to their organization, ahead of external threat actors, compromised insiders, and malicious insiders. The findings also show organizations are expanding AI agent monitoring but continue to face challenges understanding their behavior across systems and business context. Exabeam commissioned Sapio Research to survey 600 security and finance decision-makers across seven countries for its latest report, The Agentic Insider: From Monitoring to Understanding.
Exabeam research finds 48% rank AI agents with excessive access as top threat
Ahead of external threat actors (28%), compromised insiders (12%), and malicious insiders (12%)
60% use dedicated AI security or governance tooling
56% extend existing SIEM, detection, or monitoring platforms
27% identify limited behavioral context and correlation as biggest limitation
55% of security leaders delayed initiatives because they could not frame risk in financial terms
"Organizations are making meaningful progress in monitoring AI agents, but monitoring activity isn't the same as understanding behavior," said Steve Wilson, Chief AI and Product Officer at Exabeam. "AI agents operate with legitimate access and interact across multiple systems, making individual actions appear routine. Security teams need the context to connect those actions over time so they can distinguish expected automation from misuse, compromise, or unintended behavior."
AI agents do not need malicious intent to create risk, and the research shows that the rapid adoption of AI agents is changing how organizations think about insider risk. Access to sensitive data, actions beyond intended permissions, investigation complexity, and limited visibility into AI agent behavior rank among the top concerns for security and finance leaders.
Security leaders report using a variety of approaches to monitor AI agents: 60% use dedicated AI security or governance tooling; 56% extend existing SIEM, detection, or monitoring platforms; 56% use behavioral monitoring and baselining; and 29% continue to rely on manual review. Despite those investments, 27% identify limited behavioral context and correlation as the biggest limitation of their current monitoring approach, while poor visibility across environments, alert prioritization, and manual processes also remain significant challenges.
The report also finds strong alignment between security and finance leaders. Ninety-three percent say the two functions are aligned on cybersecurity risk tolerance, and 81% of security leaders say their CFO understands the cybersecurity risks they are working to mitigate. That alignment does not always translate into investment: 55% of security leaders report delaying or scaling back a security initiative because they could not frame the risk in financial terms that their CFO would accept.
"CFOs rarely question whether a cybersecurity risk is real," said Mike Byron, Chief Financial Officer at Exabeam. "The challenge is understanding how a proposed investment reduces that risk in measurable business terms. When security teams connect technical outcomes to business impact, investment decisions become much easier."
Sapio Research conducted this survey on behalf of Exabeam in June 2026 among 600 professionals at organizations with 500 or more employees, including 300 IT decision-makers responsible for security and 300 finance decision-makers. Respondents were based in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia.
About Exabeam
Exabeam is the leader in Behavior Intelligence for the agentic enterprise. As organizations deploy digital workers and confront machine-speed adversaries, Exabeam applies agent-powered analytics to understand and govern the behavior of both human and non-human insiders. With integrated Exabeam Nova cybersecurity agents, Exabeam delivers flexible, industry-proven solutions for insider threat coverage of humans and agents and faster, more accurate threat detection, investigation, and response. As the pioneer of user and entity behavior analytics and the innovator behind Agent Behavior Analytics, Exabeam is trusted by more than 3,000 enterprises worldwide to reduce risk, secure the digital workforce, and accelerate security operations.
