Why companies are pouring billions into guarding AI agents

The cybersecurity industry is seeing a massive surge in investment as businesses race to secure their digital environments against AI-driven threats. Recently, a data security firm called Cyera agreed to purchase a startup named Oasis Security for $1 billion. Oasis helps companies manage non-human identities—which are essentially digital employee accounts designed specifically for software rather than people. Separately, a startup called Spur Intelligence just raised $200 million to help businesses distinguish between real people and malicious automated programs, as internet traffic now officially contains more bots than human users.

Think of your company's network like a high-security office building. Historically, you gave every employee a plastic ID badge that granted them access only to specific rooms. To allow a piece of software to do its job, you have to create a non-human identity, which is simply a digital version of that badge. It is a set of login credentials and permissions that allow the software to talk to other apps or pull data from a server. Because AI agents are essentially advanced software programs, they need these digital keys to function. However, unlike a human who goes home at night, an AI agent can use these credentials 24/7. Managing these identities involves constant monitoring to ensure that these digital keys aren't being used by rogue software or hijacked by bad actors to steal sensitive information.

We are entering an era where a massive amount of digital activity is driven by machines, not people. When software begins performing tasks once handled by humans, the risk shifts: the danger is no longer just a person clicking a bad link, but an automated program accidentally or maliciously accessing data at scale. As bots become better at mimicking human behavior, the old ways of verifying who is on the other side of a screen are failing. The money flowing into these security startups signals that for the future of the internet, keeping track of these digital keys is just as important as protecting human passwords.