Governance Gaps Emerge as AI Agents Drive 76% Increase in NHIs

The SANS Institute's 2026 State of Identity Threats & Defenses Survey reports that growth in non-human identities (service accounts, API keys, automation bots and agentic AI) is outpacing security controls: many organizations fail to rotate machine credentials regularly, lack AI governance, and rely on manual processes that don't scale. The report warns agentic AI can behave like over‑privileged insiders and recommends secrets vaults, automated rotation, and scoped least-privilege access to mitigate the risk.