Beyond the Hype:
A Practitioner’s Take on the AI Agent Security Challenges

The conversation around AI agent security is gaining momentum, and for good reason. As enterprises adopt agentic AI, new risks are emerging faster than IT, security, or identity teams can keep up.

In a new video, cybersecurity researcher Grant Collins clearly breaks down what AI agents are, why they’re so powerful, and where they expose dangerous new gaps in enterprise security.

🎥 Watch the video:

The challenge of securing AI agents isn’t just an internal discussion; it’s rapidly becoming a top concern for cybersecurity experts.

In his video, Grant demonstrates a simple but striking example: an AI agent that autonomously deploys cloud infrastructure, translating a short text prompt into API calls that launch real servers in AWS. It’s a glimpse into how quickly autonomous systems are moving from research to production.

More importantly, it’s a reminder that each AI agent is effectively a new identity — one that can access data, trigger actions, and make decisions without direct human oversight..

The blindspot explained: AI agents and the Non-Human Identities powering them

Grant’s expert perspective highlights the urgency we’re seeing in the market. This isn’t a theoretical problem. Behind every AI agent sits a set of credentials, keys, or tokens that define what it can do. These Non-Human Identities (NHIs), together with the AI agents they power, now outnumber human users 100:1.  Yet most operate completely outside IAM, logging, or audit visibility.

Key AI agent security risks compounding the blind spot:

• Over-permissive access leads to lateral movement and data exposure.
• Prompt injection and manipulation can hijack trusted workflows.
• No ownership or audit trail leaves teams guessing which agent did what.
• Small misconfigurations can cascade into large-scale incidents.

As Collins points out, these are not hypothetical threats. They’re already appearing in real environments as AI agents are embedded into developer workflows, business processes, and customer-facing tools.

👉 Watch Grant Collins’ full explainer here.

Why this matters now

Analysts and industry experts are calling AI agent security one of the most urgent frontiers in cybersecurity.  This is why Gartner recently recognized Astrix in both its Tech Impact Radar: Global Attack Surface Management Grid and AI Cybersecurity Ecosystem Radar. These reports spotlight the growing importance of securing AI agents as a foundational layer for any AI adoption strategy.

The takeaway: securing AI agents isn’t a niche problem — it’s now a board-level priority.

Astrix’s approach: Discover. Secure. Deploy.

Grant’s video perfectly outlines the problem. Astrix provides the solution.

Following the recent introduction of our Agent Control Plane (ACP), Astrix now delivers the industry’s first complete solution for AI agent security. We enable enterprises to Discover, Secure, and Deploy AI agents responsibly, providing the confidence to scale. 

With Astrix, customers can now:

Discover: Get a single inventory of every AI agent and NHI across all environments, with full context and ownership visibility.

Secure: Identify and remediate excessive privileges, risky configurations, and live threats — with automated remediation.

Deploy: Enable developers to deploy AI safely using secure-by-design guardrails like just-in-time access, least-privilege credentials, and a full audit trail.

As AI agents redefine how organizations operate, the leaders will be those who can scale innovation and control.  Astrix enables both — making AI adoption secure, compliant, and sustainable.

Watch the video to understand the challenge, and see how Astrix helps you realize the value of AI agents faster by mitigating risk from day one.