Why Classic IAM Collapses for Agents: Rethinking IAM for Agentic Systems - Parul Singh, Red Hat

Why Classic IAM Collapses for Agents: Rethinking IAM for Agentic Systems - Parul Singh, Red Hat Autonomous AI agents increasingly reason, plan and act across tools, services and organizational boundaries. In these environments, traditional Identity and Access Management models begin to fail. Agents are not users and they are not static services. They act on behalf of others, change context during execution and operate with different levels of autonomy and risk. This talk examines why classic IAM assumptions like long lived identities, static permissions and check once trust always authorization do not hold for agentic systems. We focus on three core questions. 1. How should agent identity be defined when tools, workflows, and execution context are dynamic? 2. How do we preserve accountability when agents act on behalf of users or other agents? 3. How should access change as agent behavior and risk evolve during execution? We will outline a practical migration path from traditional IAM to agent aware identity workflows. Our insights come from our work collaborating with the COSAI Secure Design for Agentic Systems working group focused on creating shared guidance and emerging standards. We will close with current open questions and how you can join us to help solve them.