Breaking

Netwrix Flags 43% Breach Rate as AI Swells Non-Human Identities

July 10, 2026 at 10:24 EDT

Security
AI Agents
Sales & Business

Security firm Netwrix has warned that the spread of AI agents is causing a rapid surge in "non-human identities" (NHIs) inside enterprises, and that gaps in visibility and governance are driving up breach risk. According to the company's report published in June 2026, organizations whose identities were significantly expanded by AI saw a 43% breach rate over the past 12 months, roughly four times the 11% among organizations that did not expand.

June 2026 · Data & Identity Security Report

AI Agents Are Flooding Enterprises With "Non-Human Identities" — and Breaches Are Following

Organizations whose identity footprint was significantly expanded by AI suffered breaches at roughly 4× the rate of those that did not. Adoption is outrunning readiness — and traditional IAM was never built for machine identities.

The 4× breach gap · past 12 months

Breach rate, AI-expanded vs. not expanded

11%

Did NOT expand identities with AI

43%

Significantly expanded identities with AI

≈ 4× higher breach risk once AI inflates the identity footprint

10–45×

Non-human identities can outnumber human identities by this much

15%

of business decisions to be made autonomously by agentic AI by 2028 (Gartner)

41%

use agentic AI to access sensitive data

The readiness gap

Do NOT fully govern or monitor NHIs 76%

No unified view of data & access identities 74%

Cannot immediately revoke inactive account access 76%

Have completed AI security readiness 11%

Only 1 in 9 organizations is actually ready.

Upside

Better visibility trims stale credentials and eases compliance with HIPAA, SOC 2 and CMMC.

The risk

Business teams provision AI agents fast, bypassing security review — and NHIs without MFA are exploited quickly once credentials leak.

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