AI Agent Identity

AI agent identity is the unique, verifiable identity an autonomous AI agent uses to authenticate itself to systems, APIs, and other agents. Unlike a human user account, it is a non-human (machine) identity: it establishes who the agent is, on whose behalf it acts, and which credentials it presents to do so. Where permission profiles govern what an agent is allowed to do, agent identity answers the prior question of who it shows up as in the first place. In production, each agent is given its own short-lived identity with clearly bound credentials—issued through workload identities, signed tokens, or a central identity provider. This makes every action traceable to a specific agent, lets credentials rotate automatically, and allows a compromised agent to be revoked on its own without shutting down entire systems. When several agents collaborate, clean identity stops one agent from impersonating another or abusing borrowed authority. For enterprises, agent identity is the foundation for audit trails, access control, and compliance. Without it, there is no reliable answer to which agent touched which data or triggered which transaction—exactly the evidence regulators, security teams, and customers increasingly expect from production AI.