AI Agent Security & Identity: 2027 Practitioner Survey

1.How many employees does your organization have?(Required.)

4.How Many AI agents (automated, non-human systems acting on behalf of users or processes) does your organization currently have in production?(Required.)

5.How would you describe the growth of your AI agent footprint over the past 12 months?(Required.)

We don't have agents yet

Stable - roughly the same as as year ago

Growing moderately - deliberate, planned expansion

Growing quickly - faster than we originally anticipated

Growing faster than we can track or govern

6.What are AI agents primarily used for in your organization today? Select all that apply.(Required.)

Automating internal workflow (ticket routing, approvals, scheduling)

Accessing or querying internal data sources (databases, data warehouses, internal APIs)

Accessing or acting on customer data

Interacting with external third party APIs or services

Writing or deploying code

Customer-facing interactions (support agents, chatbots)

Security monitoring or threat detection

Financial operations (invoices, payments, reporting)

We aren't using agents in production yet

7.What level of autonomy do your AI agents typically have?(Required.)

Fully autonomous - agents take actions without human review

Mostly autonomous - humans are only involved in high-risk or flagged actions

Human-in-the-loop - most actions require human approval before execution

Advisory only - agents recommend actions but never execute directly

If varies significantly depending on use case

We are not using agents

8.What types of systems or data do your agents have access to? Select all that apply(Required.)

Internal productivity tools (Slack, email, calendar)

Code repositories or CI/CD systems

Customer records or PII

Financial systems or transaction data

Internal APIs or microservices

Cloud infrastructure or configuration systems

External third party APIs

Regulated data (HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2)

Agents don't have access to sensitive systems

9.How are AI agents in your organization authenticated today? Select all that apply(Required.)

Shared API keys used by multiple agents/services

Individual API keys per agent

Customer Access and Identity Management (CIAM) vendor

OAuth client credentials flow

Dedicated non-human identity store

We use the same credentials as human users

We don't have a formal authentication approach

Not applicable, we have not deployed agents

Not sure

10.Do your AI agents have defined permission scopes that limit what data or systems they access?(Required.)

Yes - all agents have defined, enforced scopes

Partially - some do and some don't

No - agents generally have broad or undefined access

I don't know

Not applicable

11.If an AI agent was compromised or began behaving unexpectedly, how quick could your team revoke access?(Required.)

Immediately - we have automated revocation in place

Within hours - manual, but well defined processes

Within days - it would take investigation to find and cut access

We don't currently have a mechanism for this

I don't know

12.Is your organization using, evaluating, or building integrations with MCP?(Required.)

Yes - we have MCP integrations in production

Yes - we are actively building or evaluating MCP

We're aware of MCP but haven't started yet

No plans currently

I'm not familiar with MCP

13.When an AI client (ChatGPT, Claude, etc) connects to an internal system or data source, how is that client authorized?(Required.)

Pre-registered by an admin before connection is allowed

Dynamic registration at connection time (no admin approval required)

No formal authorization - connections are generally open

It depends on the tool or system accessed

We haven't solved this year

I'm not sure

Not applicable

14.Who is responsible for securing AI client connections to internal tools and MCP servers in your organization?(Required.)

Our central security team

Our IAM team

Our central IT Team

The team that built or owns the individual MCP server or tool

Responsibility is shared, but not formally defined

No one has clear ownership yet

We don't have MCP deployments to secure

15.Does your organization have a formal policy for AI agent identity and access management?(Required.)

Yes - a dedicated policy exists and is enforced

In progress - we are developing one now

No - but it is on our roadmap

No - it's not currently a priority

Not sure

16.How does AI agent governance fit into your existing security program?(Required.)

It falls under our existing IAM/CIAM program

It's handled separately from CIAM on a different team

It's handled separately from CIAM on the same team

It isn't formally governed yet, but are working on it

We're still figuring out where it belongs

17.What is your organization's biggest obstacle to better AI agent security? Select top 2(Required.)

Lack of tooling that natively supports non-human identity

No internal team has clear ownership

We're moving too fast to implement proper tooling

We don't have budget allocated for it

Existing CIAM tools don't handle agent lifecycle well

It is not yet seen as a significant risk

18.Has your organization experienced a security incident or near-miss involving an AI agent or automated system in the last 12 months?(Required.)

Yes - a confirmed incident

Yes - a near miss we caught before it became an incident

Not that we are aware of

Unsure - we may not have the visibility to know

No - we are sure we have not had an incident or near miss

19.If you answered the previous question "Yes" what was the primary contributing factor? Select all that apply(Required.)

Excessive permissions (agent had access beyond what it needed)

Compromised or leaked credentials

No audit trail - we couldn't identify what the agent did

Unauthorized access to a tool or data source

Agent acted outside its intended scope

Shared credentials used by multiple agents/systems

Other

I answered No to the previous question

20.Does your organization currently use a dedicated CIAM platform?(Required.)

Yes - an enterprise CIAM platform (Okta, Ping, MSFT Entra)

Yes - a developer focused CIAM platform (AuthO, FusionAuth, Keycloak)

No - we've built identity in-house

No - we rely on basic authentication without a dedicated platform

Mixed - different systems for different use cases