CyberArk & Accenture integrate AI Refinery for security

CyberArk has announced a collaboration with Accenture aimed at addressing the growing identity security challenges posed by AI agents in enterprise environments.

The two companies will integrate their respective technologies—CyberArk's Identity Security Platform and Accenture's AI Refinery—to help organisations implement Zero Trust-based identity access controls for AI systems.

The partnership, announced on 14 April, is designed to support organisations adopting agentic AI architectures at scale. As AI agents become increasingly autonomous and embedded into critical business systems, the demand for rigorous identity and access management grows significantly.

"AI agents have the potential to gain privileged access to systems and processes, so they require the same level of identity security controls as human and machine identities," said Matt Cohen, CEO at CyberArk.

"By combining the comprehensive identity security capabilities of the CyberArk Platform with the powerful functionality of Accenture's AI Refinery, we will be enabling our customers to realise the full potential of agentic AI to transform their businesses with the peace of mind that comes with knowing the agent identities are secure."

CyberArk's Identity Security Platform is designed to protect human, machine and AI identities across all environments.

With the rise of AI agents, organisations face a range of new risks, including the need to manage the lifecycle, access, and credentials for potentially millions of machine identities.

The integration with Accenture's AI Refinery—a foundation platform that helps businesses convert AI technology into practical applications—aims to provide organisations with robust tools to manage AI agents more securely.

The AI Refinery is available across both public and private cloud platforms and is built to support rapid AI deployment across cloud and Software as a Service environments.

According to Accenture's Technology Vision 2025 report, 77% of executives believe AI agents will reinvent how their organisations build digital systems.

This widespread anticipation of AI-driven transformation underlines the importance of securing AI agent identities as part of the digital workforce.

"AI agents operate autonomously, presenting unique identity security challenges.

Ensuring secure authentication, credentialing and authorisation is crucial for their safe operation both within and outside of organisations," said Damon McDougald, global Cybersecurity Protection lead at Accenture. "Our collaboration with CyberArk by integrating Accenture's AI Refinery into their platform is a significant step forward in helping our clients achieve secure identity access controls and more effective credential management."

The partnership will focus on delivering several key capabilities to support the safe deployment of AI agents in production environments. These include:

• Visibility and control: Giving enterprises comprehensive oversight of AI agent activity and enabling quick identification of risks or anomalies.

• Least privilege and just-in-time access: Enforcing Zero Trust principles to ensure AI agents are only granted access to what they need, minimising attack surfaces.

• Secure authentication: Establishing strong verification and authentication processes for AI agents interacting with systems and other agents.

• Protection against manipulation: Implementing safeguards to defend AI agents from both internal and external threats that could lead to data exposure or operational disruptions.

With enterprises increasingly relying on autonomous AI systems, the integration of security into the core of AI adoption becomes essential.

The joint efforts of CyberArk and Accenture mark a strategic response to these emerging demands, aiming to give organisations confidence in the secure deployment of AI agents.