IBM makes Agent Identity and HashiCorp Vault 2.2 generally available to govern AI agents
At TechXchange 2026 on October 27, IBM made Agent Identity and HashiCorp Vault 2.2 generally available. Agent Identity records each AI agent's owner, lifecycle and granted authority, while Vault gives agents their own accounts, renews their credentials and revokes them on unauthorized actions.
IBM announced identity and control features for enterprise AI agents at its TechXchange 2026 conference in Atlanta on October 27. Two are generally available now. IBM Agent Identity "establishes the authoritative record for each agent," covering its owner, lifecycle status and granted authority. HashiCorp Vault 2.2 gives agents their own secured accounts, renews their credentials automatically and adds post-quantum encryption, and IBM says Vault enables "real-time revocation when an agent attempts an unauthorized action." IBM also made watsonx Orchestrate evaluation features generally available, while Discover, which finds agents built on Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry and Google Gemini, and Contain, which sandboxes agents and adds a kill switch, are in tech preview. Secure Hub, for visibility across Vault environments, is in public preview. IBM cited Gartner figures that only 13% of organizations believe they have the right AI agent governance in place.
Why it matters
The announcement splits agent identity into two records: who the agent is and who answers for it, and what short-lived credential it holds right now. It is the same split Infisical is funding with its credential broker. An agent running on a developer's long-lived API key has neither: no named owner and no expiry.
Whatever platform you use, give every agent an accountable human owner, issue it scoped credentials that expire, and make revocation a tested path, not a ticket. At TechXchange, Albert Einstein College of Medicine is presenting its use of IBM Verify and Vault for agent identity. Our guide to securing AI agent identities covers the controls, and the Agent Identity Standards Map 2026 maps the open standards for agent authentication and delegation.
Source: IBM Newsroom
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