Why you can'gt hire your way out of the AI agent identity problem
Okta, Thursday, March 12th, 2026
What security and IT leaders need to build now, before the agent explosion makes governance impossible
A question is landing in the inboxes of nearly every CISO and CIO right now.
"This AI agent stuff looks great. But how many identity admins am I going to need to hire to manage all of it?"
It is a completely reasonable question. It is also, if taken literally, the wrong one, because the organizations that approach AI agent governance as a staffing problem will lose. Not because they can't hire fast enough (even if they could), but because no amount of human administration solves a problem that is fundamentally architectural in nature.
The right question is not how many people you need to manage AI agents; it's what kind of foundation you need to build so that the answer stays manageable as your agent fleet grows from dozens to thousands, and beyond. That foundation starts with identity, and the window to build it is right now.