Legacy IAM was built for humans — and AI agents now outnumber them 82 to 1

Active Directory, LDAP, and early PAM were built for humans. AI agents and machines were the exception. Today, they outnumber people 82 to 1, and that human-first identity model is breaking down at machine speed.

AI agents are the fastest-growing and least-governed class of these machine identities — and they don’t just authenticate, they act. ServiceNow spent roughly $11.6 billion on security acquisitions in 2025 alone — a signal that identity, not models, is becoming the control plane for enterprise AI risk.

CyberArk’s 2025 research confirms what security teams and AI builders have long suspected: Machine identities now outnumber humans by a wide margin. Microsoft Copilot Studio users created over 1 million AI agents in a single quarter, up 130% from the previous period. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 25% of enterprise breaches will trace back to AI agent abuse.

Why legacy architectures fail at machine scale

Builders don ...