Why Traditional IAM Systems Fail in the Age of AI Agents

Traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) is fundamentally broken for AI agents because it relies on human interaction (like MFA) or static credentials, which cannot manage autonomous, non-interactive, or highly dynamic delegated workflows. The necessary architecture shift involves implementing a dual-identity model for delegated agents, robust Machine Identity Management (MIM) for ephemeral autonomous agents, and adopting Zero Trust AI Access (ZTAI), which replaces static roles with dynamic Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and validates the agent's intent (semantic verification) rather than just its identity.