Agentic AI
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Governance & Risk Management
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Identity & Access Management
Entrust CIO Rishi Kaushal on Strategies CIOs Need to Manage Agent Sprawl
As enterprises race to deploy AI agents, a new identity crisis is emerging. Rishi Kaushal, CIO of Entrust, said organizations are rapidly expanding beyond human identities into a world of machine and agentic identities, creating security, governance and compliance challenges that many companies have yet to fully address.
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While identity management has traditionally focused on people, Kaushal argues that AI agents must now be treated as first-class identities with the same levels of accountability, auditing and oversight. As agents increasingly access systems, make decisions and execute workflows autonomously, organizations need visibility into what those agents are doing and why. “Every agent should have its own identity, defined permissions and clear accountability,” Kaushal said.
The challenge is growing rapidly as organizations experiment with AI assistants, workflow agents and autonomous systems. Many companies, he noted, rushed to deploy agents without establishing governance frameworks, resulting in agent sprawl, duplicate functionality and increased risk exposure.
Kaushal said zero-trust principles must extend beyond human users to encompass AI agents as well. Continuous verification, least-privilege access and auditability are just as important for machine identities as they are for employees. Without those controls, organizations risk creating hundreds or thousands of agents operating under poorly managed permissions.
In this video interview with ISMG, Kaushal discussed:
- Why AI agents should be managed as a distinct identity category;
- How agent sprawl creates security, operational and compliance risks;
- Why governance, lifecycle management and kill switches are essential for enterprise AI.
Kaushal is the CIO of Entrust, where he leads enterprise technology strategy and digital transformation initiatives. Prior to joining Entrust in 2019, Kaushal held various leadership roles in IT business operations, program management, and software development at HID Global, Toshiba America, and DAZ Systems, now part of Accenture.
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