The modern security paradigm must shift from solely protecting the "front door." With billions of credentials already compromised, companies must operate as if identities are breached. The focus should be on maintaining session security over time, not just authenticating at the point of access.
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Your physical identity (Social Security number, etc.) is trivial to breach. The single most effective defense is to lock your credit reports with the major bureaus. This prevents fraudulent accounts from being opened in your name, as it blocks most verification checks, effectively freezing out attackers.
For AI agents, the key vulnerability parallel to LLM hallucinations is impersonation. Malicious agents could pose as legitimate entities to take unauthorized actions, like infiltrating banking systems. This represents a critical, emerging security vector that security teams must anticipate.
Managing human identities is already complex, but the rise of AI agents communicating with systems will multiply this challenge exponentially. Organizations must prepare for managing thousands of "machine identities" with granular permissions, making robust identity management a critical prerequisite for the AI era.
Recent security breaches (e.g., Gainsight/Drift on Salesforce) signal a shift. As AI agents access more data, incumbents can leverage security concerns to block third-party apps and promote their own integrated solutions, effectively using security as a competitive weapon.
Vercel is building infrastructure based on a threat model where developers cannot be trusted to handle security correctly. By extracting critical functions like authentication and data access from the application code, the platform can enforce security regardless of the quality or origin (human or AI) of the app's code.
Digital trust with partners requires embedding privacy considerations into their entire lifecycle, from onboarding to system access. This proactive approach builds confidence and prevents data breaches within the extended enterprise, rather than treating privacy as a reactive compliance task.
A robust identity strategy is "T-shaped." The horizontal bar represents the entire user lifecycle (pre-auth access, phishing-resistant auth, post-auth session security). The vertical bar represents deep integrations beyond SSO, including lifecycle management, risk signal sharing, and system-wide session termination.
While sophisticated AI attacks are emerging, the vast majority of breaches will continue to exploit poor security fundamentals. Companies that haven't mastered basics like rotating static credentials are far more vulnerable. Focusing on core identity hygiene is the best way to future-proof against any attack, AI-driven or not.