Secure access in the age of AI: Key findings from our 2026 Report

As AI moves from experimentation into everyday workflows and AI agents begin operating more autonomously across systems, access environments are changing in scale, complexity, and speed. Our latest research, Secure access in the age of AI , looks at how security leaders are navigating one of the fastest shifts in enterprise technology adoption, and where existing access models are starting to show strain.

For organizations, AI brings meaningful opportunity. But every new AI tool or agent also introduces additional identities, permissions, and access paths.  As a result, identity and network access are no longer just foundational controls. They are central to how organizations manage risk in the age of AI.

AI Is Expanding the Access Landscape

Every AI tool, integration, or agent introduces new identities, permissions, and pathways to systems and data. In many cases, these identities don’t behave like traditional users. They operate continuously, interact with multiple systems, and often require broad access to function as intended.

Security leaders are already seeing the effects of this expansion. In our research, 97% of organizations experienced an identity or network access incident in the past year, and 70% reported incidents tied to AI‑related activity. Threats such as AI‑assisted phishing and agent privilege escalation are now part of the real‑world threat landscape, not edge cases.

What’s notable is that these incidents aren’t always driven by novel attack techniques. Just as often, they stem from environments that have grown complex faster than governance and controls can keep up. As AI adoption scales, that gap becomes increasingly visible.

 

  

6 in 10 leaders anticipate more access incidents due to AI agents and employee use of GenAI.

Fragmentation Was Already a Challenge. AI Raises the Stakes.

Long before AI entered the picture, many organizations were already managing fragmented identity and network access environments. Multiple identity providers, overlapping network access tools, and point solutions from different vendors are common, especially in large enterprises.

The research shows that this fragmentation is persistent. On average, organizations use five identity solutions and four network access solutions, often from different vendors. Nearly half of security leaders say they are overwhelmed by vendor sprawl, a figure that has increased year over year.

That fragmentation has real consequences:

• Visibility becomes partial and delayed
• Policy changes take longer to propagate
• Gaps emerge between tools, creating opportunities for misuse and attack

These gaps don’t just create operational overhead. They slow decision‑making and make it harder to respond consistently as risk changes. In an environment where AI systems and attackers alike can move quickly, those delays matter more than they used to.

 

      

32% of organizations say their access management solutions are duplicative, 40% say they have too many different vendors.

Access Incidents Are Not Always Malicious

Another important takeaway from the research is that access‑related incidents are not solely the result of attacks. Organizations report a near‑even

split between malicious incidents (53%) and accidental ones (47%).

This points to risk driven by complexity, unclear ownership, and misaligned controls, not just adversarial behavior. As employees adopt generative AI tools and teams deploy agents faster than policies can be updated, unintentional misuse becomes more likely.

AI doesn’t create these conditions on its own, but it does amplify them. When permissions are broad, visibility is limited, and enforcement is inconsistent, even small mistakes can escalate quickly.

Top causes of identity and network access incidents. 97% of organizations have had an incident in the past 12 months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why an Access Fabric Matters Now

As access environments grow more complex, security leaders are rethinking how access decisions are made and enforced across the enterprise. The research suggests that organizations using fewer, more integrated access tools have better visibility into activity and can respond more quickly as risk changes.

This shift is often described as moving toward an access fabric. An access fabric is not a single product or control layer. It is an architectural approach that treats access as a continuous, end‑to‑end system – using identity as the consistent decision point and enforcing those decisions across environments in near real time.

In practice, an access fabric enables:

• A common identity foundation for employees, workloads, and AI agents
• More immediate enforcement of access decisions across the network
• Continuous signal sharing across identity, network, and security tools
• Faster propagation of policy and risk changes without manual stitching

This model matters because AI systems and automated attacks operate at machine speed. Static access decisions or delayed enforcement create gaps that are difficult to detect and harder to close.

As a result, 64% of security leaders say they are consolidating identity and network access tools, citing complexity, visibility gaps, and slower response times in fragmented environments. Fewer, better‑integrated tools make it easier to apply consistent policy and adapt as new identities and access paths are introduced.

 

64% of organizations are consolidating tools across identity and network access. 94% of organizations prefer a comprehensive and integrated identity and access management platform.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read the full report

To explore the full research, including practical insights and recommendations for building a unified access strategy, read the Secure access in the age of AI report.

- Kaitlin Murphy

 

 

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Prevent identity attacks, ensure least privilege access, unify access controls, and improve the experience for users with comprehensive identity and network access solutions across on-premises and clouds.

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