1Password's research finds AI agent adoption is outpacing governance

Summary and key findings

1Password surveyed 500 American IT and security professionals and 500 developers to learn how organizations are adopting and governing AI for their most technical workers.

We found that companies are racing to embed AI agents throughout their systems, but have done so without a security architecture to effectively govern them. The result is a wide gap in visibility and accountability, in which agents access sensitive information and take actions without oversight.

The impact of this agentic governance gap is already being felt in the form of security incidents, work disruptions, and credential misuse. We’ll explore the 1Password AI Agent Governance survey in depth in the blog below, but here are some of the most illustrative and surprising findings:

• Agents are pervasive in production environments:Nearly half (46%) of developers are using AI agents in production environments today. 45% expect to use AI agents in the next two years. In total, 91% are either using agents today or expect to do so in the next two years.
• Agents are accessing sensitive data without proper controls: 71% of all respondents said that AI agents have access to customer data, sensitive IP, or HR information at their companies. Meanwhile, 62% of all respondents report security gaps in how their company manages agents.
• Two-thirds of developers (67%) said agent security has gaps:65% of developers say they’re expected or encouraged to use AI agents, but only 33% say they have a highly secure way to do so.
• Agents are taking unintended actions: 47% of developers have had an AI agent take an unintended action after following instructions embedded in untrusted content (AKA prompt injection). 74% of developers witnessed unintended consequences from the use of AI agents.

Agentic development is colliding with human security

In the world of AI, change happens at unimaginable (in fact, inhuman) speed. And few revolutions have come more swiftly than the agentic era, in which AI agents…