How Agentic Identities Will Transform Our Lives
and Our Security, Over the Next 3 Years
Something extraordinary is happening. We are moving from AI that simply responds to us to AI that acts for us. Agentic identities, AI agents that can autonomously operate on our behalf, are no longer a futuristic idea. They are already entering products, businesses, and daily life. In the next three years, they will reshape how we work, travel, shop, and secure our systems.
By 2026, your agents will coordinate your travel end-to-end. When your flight lands, a ride will be waiting; you will not open an app. You will not even tap a button.
— One of the leading ride-sharing apps
This shift also introduces profound security questions. When agents can move money, schedule meetings, book rides, or access sensitive data, how do we trust them? How do we secure these new identities that can act with power equal to or greater than that of a human user?
Let us unpack what is happening, why it matters, and what must come next.
From Hype to Real Adoption
Just months ago, “AI agents” sounded like a buzzword. Today, every major enterprise I speak with has agentic interfaces on its immediate roadmap. Some are still in early experimentation. Others, including major banks, are openly planning to operate as AI-driven organizations within the next few years.
We are seeing three clear adoption patterns emerge:
Grassroots adoption: Individual developers and teams experimenting with agents to automate personal or team workflows.
Internal integration: Companies exposing internal systems through agentic protocols such as MCP to enable AI-driven access and orchestration.
Customer-facing interfaces: A growing minority already shipping production-ready agentic interfaces for their users.
One example I often share is a leading ride-sharing company that envisions that by 2026, your agent will coordinate your travel end-to-end. When your flight lands, a ride will be waiting; you will not open an app. You will not even tap a button. Your agent will connect your calendar, flight data, and ride-sharing account seamlessly.
That is just one scenario. Now imagine your agent managing your finances, healthcare, scheduling, purchases, or software infrastructure. The possibilities are immense.
The Double-Edged Sword: Risk and Opportunity
This explosion of interconnected agents creates incredible experiences, but also a huge attack surface. When an agent has the ability to initiate actions across multiple systems, it is effectively a new kind of identity. And that means:
New security risks: If an agent is compromised, so is everything it touches.
New privacy concerns: Agents will often operate across sensitive domains such as finance, health, or corporate data.
New trust boundaries: Agents do not just connect to one API; they bridge many systems at once.
The same power that makes agents valuable can also make them dangerous. It is not enough to build clever agents; we must make them trustworthy.
The New Security Stack: Bridging Tools Through Agentic Identity
Here is the good news: the same mechanisms that make agents powerful can also make our security better.
When agents can integrate multiple services at once, they can help us detect and respond to threats faster. Imagine an agent with controlled permissions scanning multiple internal databases and external services in real time to flag anomalies, detect fraud, or enforce compliance.
For example, a financial institution might:
Use an internal MCP interface to expose transaction data,
Connect to a fraud detection service,
And empower an agent to continuously cross-check patterns, all without requiring humans to manually stitch them together.
In short, the same connective tissue that could introduce risk can also enable stronger defenses if, and only if, we build the right trust and control layers.
Building Trustworthy Agentic Identities
Ultimately, it all comes down to trust. For agentic identities to become a reliable part of our daily and professional lives, we need:
Clear permissioning: Granular, auditable controls that define what each agent can and cannot do.
Strong authentication: Agents should be treated as first-class identities in our security systems.
Transparent auditing: Every action must be traceable. If an agent acts, we need to know what, when, and why.
Interoperable protocols: Standards like MCP are emerging as common languages between agents and systems, enabling secure and predictable interaction.
Trust is not a nice-to-have. It is the foundation that determines whether agentic systems empower us or endanger us.
The Next Three Years
We are at the very beginning of this transformation. In three years, agentic identities will not be a niche topic. They will be everywhere, embedded in our apps, our businesses, and our infrastructure.
Some will use these agents to build extraordinary experiences. Others will weaponize their vulnerabilities. The difference will come down to who built trust into their foundation from day one.
At Permit.io, we have long believed that permissioning and auditing are at the heart of secure systems. Agentic identities make this more urgent than ever. By treating agents as real, controllable, and auditable identities, we can not only defend against new risks but also harness them to strengthen security itself.
We are not just securing systems anymore. We are securing autonomous actors.
The future is not just AI-powered. It is agent-powered. And the time to build trustworthy agentic identities is now.
Until next time,
Or