With machine identities already outnumbering humans 82 to 1, WinMagic argues AI agents should be verified through a common trust architecture spanning users, devices, workloads, and machines.
TORONTO, July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cybersecurity teams are preparing for AI agents by adding new credentials, policies, and controls to identity environments already divided across users, devices, service accounts, and cloud workloads. A 2025 survey found 82 machine identities for every human identity and that 70% of respondents considered identity silos a root cause of cybersecurity risk. Thi Nguyen-Huu, President and CEO of WinMagic, a cybersecurity innovator known for endpoint-based authentication and encryption, says the work on AI agents’ identity is necessary but it should not become another identity silo. The architecture that covers AI agents can cover users, devices, service accounts, and workloads.
What each of them needs is a trusted witness at the point of access that can confirm who is acting, on what platform, and under what conditions. “Identity is what you verify before you give access,” said Nguyen-Huu. “Online, it cannot be the user alone. It has to be the actor, on a platform, under a defined set of conditions. Once you define identity that way, there is no reason to build a new architecture for a new actor.