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According to Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2026, AI is ready to evolve from pilots and experiments to delivering operational value through agentic automation.
Many processes will move entirely out of human hands, managed instead by zero-touch automations that can respond to incoming requirements and execute complete workflows from start to finish.
IT leaders, in particular, stand to benefit from integrating agentic automation with tools like PowerShell to manage routine tasks faster and more efficiently, freeing human talent to focus on higher-impact initiatives.
Yet without proper governance, embedding AI capabilities into critical business infrastructure quickly turns from an opportunity to a liability. At the center of this lies a major culprit: uncontrolled access.
Uncontrolled Access Could Be the Weak Point of Your Agentic Automation Strategy
A recent IBM survey found that 97% of organizations that experience an AI-related breach lacked proper AI access controls.
Uncontrolled access is the most common and dangerous byproduct of rushed AI adoption. In their eagerness to experiment, there’s a tendency for developers to give AI agents broad or privileged access to systems without considering the long-term risks of doing so.
McKinsey’s playbook on Deploying Agentic AI with Safety and Security warns that many enterprises are rolling out agentic capabilities faster than they can secure them. The result is a growing gap between automation ambition and operational control, leaving organizations exposed to both security risks and inefficiency.
Without access controls in place, agentic automation can effectively query databases, make configurations, or execute scripts outside the boundaries of security policy. The risks should be obvious.
Like humans without governance, autonomous agents can make mistakes, straying from their intended purposes and causing errors and misconfigurations that are hard to track and remediate.
Even worse, malicious actors that get a hold of unsecured AI agent accounts can leverage them to gain free access to databases and functionality within the organization’s infrastructure.
Every ungoverned, untracked, and unsecured automation error can mean extended downtime, manual troubleshooting, missed SLAs, reputational damage, and wasted resources, not to mention security breaches, data leaks, and compliance violations.
These factors can significantly undermine ROI, and implementing controls to prevent unauthorized access is a crucial step toward mitigating this risk.
4 Key Strategic Tips to Eliminate the Threat of Uncontrolled Access in Agentic Automation
If the surge in cybersecurity incidents throughout 2025 has demonstrated anything, it’s that security must scale alongside innovation. IT leaders should keep this in mind if they want their agentic automation initiatives to deliver ROI in the long term.
The key is to treat automation with the same level of control, visibility, and compliance rigor as any human-driven system.
Here are 4 strategic tips that will help to eliminate the threat of uncontrolled access when implementing agentic automation:
1. Centralize Oversight
Without oversight, there is no guarantee that systems are implemented securely. Agentic automation will amplify existing vulnerabilities in shadow systems, turning innovation into exposure.
Already, with regard to Generative AI usage, recent reports find that AI is now the #1 data exfiltration vector in enterprise, driven by the fact that 67% of AI usage happens through unmanaged personal accounts.
Gartner stresses the importance of establishing AI-ready foundations, meaning scalable, secure environments that integrate a centralized governance policy across all automation layers.
Running automations through a centralized platform for managing credentials, access control, and other security policies eliminates blind spots and ensures that every execution adheres to the same governance model.
Centralization also supports collaboration between IT and business units, enabling safe, cross-departmental automations without compromising visibility or control. This is crucial for optimizing both productivity and security.
In sum, centralization should be viewed as a strategic cornerstone that allows IT leaders to effectively implement all subsequent steps in this list.
2. Treat AI Agents Like Human Identities
IBM finds that 30% of all security intrusions stem from identity-based attacks.
As organizations create identities for AI agents, complete with access to APIs, credentials, and sensitive data, they inevitably expand their potential attack surface.
That’s why rigorous identity and access management (IAM) for AI agents is absolutely critical. Every agent should have a unique identity profile, including defined roles, permissions, and authentication credentials, the same way a human user would.
By aligning agentic identities with existing human identity governance policies, IT teams can maintain accountability and ensure that every action, whether performed by a person or an agent, is securely attributed and auditable.
3. Fence Off Sensitive Systems and Data with RBAC
Not all data or systems should be accessible to automation. Once identities are in place, IT can configure tools and databases to restrict AI agents to the specific functionalities or datasets needed for their assigned tasks.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a helpful backbone for every agentic automation framework, limiting privilege creep and providing a clear audit trail of who (or what) performed which actions, and when.
This containment approach aligns with McKinsey’s recommendation to “secure the digital perimeter of AI workflows,” minimizing lateral access and preventing unintended cross-system actions.
4. Make Enforcement Automatic, Not Voluntary
Training staff on the safe management of agentic automation workflows is important, but training alone isn’t enough.
Human error happens, and when misconfigured AI agents are deployed to act autonomously, the lid can be hard to replace on pandora’s box.
That’s why enforcement must be built into the automation system itself.
A centralized control plane ensures that no automation runs without key human-in-the-loop checks, such as approval workflows, conditional access validation, and context-based verification.
Embedding these safeguards at the platform level makes policy compliance automatic and non-negotiable, rather than dependent on memory or best intentions.
Regaining Control with ScriptRunner
Agentic automation promises faster delivery, smarter processes, and maximized efficiency, but only if governance keeps pace.
The real ROI killer isn’t the technology itself; it’s lapses in governances that erode trust, consistency, and security in how that technology is deployed.
ScriptRunner gives IT leaders a centralized platform to manage and enforce governance across every agentic automation.
With built-in controls, configuration interfaces, and comprehensive logging, ScriptRunner ensures that every automation is authorized, traceable, and compliant before it runs.
Contact us today to see how ScriptRunner turns control and visibility into secure, measurable enterprise value.