🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Why Cisco’s Astrix deal fits machine identity growth

• Large enterprises can have nearly 45 non-human identities for each human identity, including software bots, service accounts, and API keys 1.
• The average large company now manages more than 250,000 of these identities across cloud environments, with totals rising more than 30% each year 1.
• The global market for managing them is projected to grow from US$3.59 billion in 2025 to US$22.14 billion by 2034 1.
• Compromised non-human credentials were tied to more than 28% of cloud breaches in the 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 1.

AI agents raise the stakes in machine identity security

• AI agents are the fastest-growing segment here, and their share is expected to move past cloud workload identities by the early 2030s 1. Cloud workload identities are digital identities used by software running in cloud systems 1.
• Microsoft introduced Microsoft Entra Agent ID in June 2025 to manage and secure identities used by AI agents 2.
• Deal activity picked up in 2024 and 2025 as large security vendors moved into this area through acquisitions plus in-house product work 1.
• Some established vendors are widening Privileged Access Management (PAM) plus identity and access management (IAM) platforms to cover machines, workloads, plus human administrator use cases 3.