The cybersecurity industry is rushing to confront a new identity crisis — not for people, but for AI agents that act autonomously and now need to be managed like employees.

Why it matters: Without proper guardrails, agents could, at the very least, cause incidental data breaches, misuse login credentials, and leak sensitive information.

The big picture: Just as companies start to embrace AI agents for critical tasks, security vendors are scrambling to build guardrails around them, warning that every agent must have an identity — or risk undermining trust, compliance and control.

• Even without AI agents, hackers have already proven to be pretty pretty good at hacking employee accounts through stolen and reused passwords.
• "You can't treat them like a human identity and think that multifactor authentication applies in the same way because humans click things, they can type things in, they can type codes," David Bradbury, chief security officer at Okta, told Axios.
• Agents require a new way of thinking: they need the same "elevated, high trust" that human accounts receive but in a new way, Bradbury said.

Driving the news: Securing AI agents' identities was a major theme of last week's RSA Conference in San Francisco.

• 1Password introduced two security tools right before the conference tailored to both AI agent developers and IT managers to help make securing agents' identities easier.
• Other identity security providers, including Okta and OwnID, also released products for securing AI identities earlier this year.

By the numbers: Deloitte predicts that 25% of companies that use generative AI will launch agentic AI pilots this year. Half will launch pilots by 2027, Deloitte says.

State of play: Security pros are already used to securing so-called nonhuman identities.

• Bot accounts, file servers, VPN gateways and any other machine-based entities require their own version of a username and password.
• IT teams also have needed to closely monitor which company files and systems these tools have access to and constantly rotate out their passwords.

Between the lines: Securing the identities of AI agents doesn't require much additional innovation. But the stakes are higher since those agents could be given free rein on a company's network.

• "They work 24/7, without sleeping and at very quick speeds," Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password, told Axios. An agent "acts and reasons, and as a result of that, you need to understand what it's doing."
• Kevin Bocek, senior vice president of innovation at CyberArk, told Axios that security teams should create a kill switch for any agents operating on their networks.
• "If that agent should happen to have a bad day, or its many copies happen to have a bad day, then it's simple," Bocek said. "I can say, 'You know what, these agents are no longer authorized.'"

The intrigue: Knowledge of agents' unique security challenges varies across companies, and security companies are hustling to evangelize executives on the need to start securing these agents now as they rapidly deploy them in their environments.

• Shiner said agent security has come up at most of his private dinners with CISOs and developer leaders in recent month. "A lot of companies are just learning the implications from a security perspective and are looking for answers," he added.
• Bocek warned that many security teams don't have a seat in the room as companies discuss their new agent deployment plans.
• "They are not part of those AI agent discussions that are moving fast, to be completely honest," Bocek said.

What to watch: Agent deployment is expected to accelerate over the next year, Jason Clinton, CISO at Anthropic, said during a Coalition for Secure AI panel I moderated last week.

• Clinton warned that there could soon be a world where AI agents are managing other AI agents — and every human employee could one day be required to undergo management training to supervise these virtual employees.
• "If you have entry-level folks, help them make the transition to management, because they're going to be managing agents, not managing people," he added.

A Signal archiving tool the Trump administration relied on has suspended operations after two reported hacks, according to several news reports.

Why it matters: The suspension is just the latest in a series of events highlighting how poor security controls are putting high-value American secrets at risk.

Driving the news: Last week, Reuters published a photo of now-former national security adviser Mike Waltz using a Signal-like messaging app, called TeleMessage, that archives messages sent on the encrypted messaging app.

• On Sunday, 404 Media published a story about a hacker who claims they were able to hack into TeleMessage in about "15-20 minutes."
• The hacker walked away with names and contact information for government officials, usernames and passwords for TeleMessage's backend panel, and indicators for which companies are using the service, according to 404 Media's report.
• NBC News also reported yesterday it had received information from a different hacker saying they were also able to break in and download a large cache of files.

What they're saying: "TeleMessage is investigating a potential security incident," a spokesperson for Smarsh, which owns the app, told CNBC in a statement.

• "Out of an abundance of caution, all TeleMessage services have been temporarily suspended. All other Smarsh products and services remain fully operational," the spokesperson added.

State of play: Israel-based TeleMessage has since wiped its website.

• Screenshots of the company's website from April 8, as seen on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, show that the service publicly claimed it could help capture messages in Signal, Telegram and WeChat.
• Now, each TeleMessage webpage redirects to the same sparsely filled homepage that erases all mention of Signal, Telegram and WeChat.

Threat level: Even before the 404 Media report, security experts were warning that TeleMessage appeared to tamper with Signal's end-to-end encryption since it would allow a message to be retrieved after being stored somewhere else.

Between the lines: Several companies already offer secure messaging tools that could help officials archive messages without breaking encryption.

Staff departures are starting to roll in at the nation's top cybersecurity agency as employees have begun taking the Department of Homeland Security's buyout offers.

Why it matters: The departures from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are the latest hit to an agency that's staring down a complete overhaul under Trump 2.0.

• Former officials and experts have warned that dismantling CISA could put the security of the country's critical infrastructure at risk.

Zoom in: Friday was the last day for some at CISA who took one of the buyout options.

• Gregory Wahl, a section chief in CISA's international partnerships and engagement division, wrote on LinkedIn that more than 60 employees had resigned from the agency's Stakeholder Engagement Division.
• "Make no mistake, we are all worse off for this," he wrote.
• Lauren Zabierek and Bob Lord, who previously announced their planned departures and spearheaded the agency's "Secure By Design" initiative, also officially left the agency Friday.
• Theses departures join a growing list of high-profile individuals who have already left the agency since the start of the Trump administration.

Driving the news: Trump recommended cutting $491 million from CISA in his 2026 budget proposal, per a summary released Friday.

• Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem repeated her hope to get CISA "back on mission" at the RSA Conference last week.

The big picture: Tensions between the private sector and the federal government were already high — driven mostly by the workforce layoffs, budget cuts and perceived attacks on CISA.

What they're saying: A CISA spokesperson told Axios in a statement that the agency's "team is the best and the brightest and we thank them for their service."

• "As team members transition in and out of government, the agency is continually evaluating our structure to ensure we are best positioned to execute our statutory mission as America's Cyber Defense Agency," the statement said.
• "We remain steadfast in our mission to safeguard the nation's critical infrastructure against all cyber and physical threats and will continue to collaborate with our partners across government, industry, and with international allies to strengthen global critical infrastructure security and resilience."

The idea that you're going to train people to not open [emails] that look fishy isn't going to work for anything anymore. Real messages have some grammatical errors because people are bad at writing. ChatGPT never gets it wrong.

@ D.C.

📲 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth engaged in at least a dozen separate Signal chats to conduct official Pentagon business. (Wall Street Journal)

💥 Alexei Bulazel, senior director of cybersecurity at the National Security Council, said at RSAC that he wants to normalize the use of offensive cyber activity as a tool for responding to national security issues. (Nextgov)

🤖 A DOGE recruiter told a Slack group of Palantir alumni that AI agents could end up taking over tasks that tens of thousands of federal workers currently participate in. (Wired)

@ Industry

📉 The volatile stock market is causing major private cyber companies to reconsider going public, despite years of preparation. (Wall Street Journal)

💰 Ireland's privacy regulator hit TikTok with a €530 million ($601 million) fine for sending personal data of Europeans to China illegally. (Politico)

💬 As AI models advance, they're hallucinating more, and no one seems to know why. (New York Times)

@ Hackers and hacks

✈️ Hackers have targeted GlobalX Air, an airline that is helping the Trump administration's deportation efforts, and have stolen apparent flight records and passenger manifests. (404 Media)

⚠️ The Qilin ransomware gang is threatening to leak stolen records from the Cobb County, Georgia government, including photos of autopsies, driver's licenses and forms listing Social Security numbers. (Axios Atlanta)

🛍️ Harrods, the well-known British luxury department store, said it was targeted in a cyberattack and has "restricted internet access at our sites" as it responds to the incident. (BBC)

🪦 RIP to a real one — and shoutout to all the readers who also hear the ringtone whenever they think about Skype.