AI Agents Are Becoming Employees, So Why Aren’t We Governing Them Like One?

InnovationAI Agents Are Becoming Employees, So Why Aren’t We Governing Them Like One?ByArt Gilliland,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)Jun 11, 2026, 07:00am EDTArt Gilliland, CEO at Delinea. gettyHere's a simple way to think about what AI agents do inside an enterprise: They connect to your most sensitive systems and data, execute workflows on your behalf and make operational decisions at a volume and velocity no human can match. Gartner projects that 40% of enterprise applications will incorporate them by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025. And most are completely ungoverned. That’s the part that should keep security leaders up at night. We spent decades building identity governance frameworks for human access. Then we gave AI agents broader access than most employees have, and with less oversight.The AI Security Confidence ParadoxDelinea’s 2026 Identity Security Report, "Uncovering the Hidden Risks of the AI Race," surveyed more than 2,000 IT decision makers across seven countries, and what we found can be best described as an AI security confidence paradox: Organizations feel significantly more secure than they actually are. Eighty-two percent said they were confident in their ability to discover non-human identities, including AI agents. Only 30% can validate that discovery. Ninety percent face some level of identity visibility gap. What should concern boards the most is that 90% of security teams are under pressure to loosen identity controls to keep AI initiatives moving, and fewer than one in three consistently enforce security requirements when they conflict with speed.The controls to govern AI agents already exist. Organizations are just choosing not to apply them when speed is on the line. Given the speed at which an AI breach can create damage, that’s not a sustainable position.AI...