AI Agent Identity: How to Authenticate and Govern AI Agents
SSOJet, Thursday, June 25th, 2026
AI agents need distinct identities with OAuth 2.0 flows, short-lived credentials, and least-privilege scopes.
AI agents that authenticate to APIs and execute multi-step actions create an identity challenge existing credential models cannot handle.
Rather than sharing human logins or generic service accounts, each agent should have its own governed identity using delegated flows for user-facing work and client-credentials flows for autonomous operation.
Non-human identities now vastly outnumber human ones, and leaked credentials can stay valid for years.
Best practices include short-lived federated credentials, minimal scopes, human approval for high-risk actions, named owners, and continuous audit trails.
Platforms like Microsoft Entra Agent ID are formalizing agent identity, though OAuth 2.0 already supports these patterns.