Gravitee, a vendor of AI agent management software, released the third wave of its State of AI Agent Security research on Monday, reporting that enterprise adoption of AI agents is accelerating faster than the controls needed to govern them.
The survey of 900 senior technology leaders in the United States (600) and United Kingdom (300), conducted in October 2026 by Opinion Matters, found that organizations running more than 150 agents jumped from 7% to 16% since the previous wave in April 2026. At the same time, only 17% of respondents said they give each agent its own identity, and fewer than one in ten have a named person formally accountable for what their agents do.
"Agents are making decisions and acting on their own inside enterprises, including banks, hospitals and government departments," said Rory Blundell, CEO of Gravitee. "When one goes wrong, most organizations cannot say which agent it was, what it was allowed to do, or who is responsible. That is not a technology gap. It is an accountability gap, and it is widening as agent estates grow."
Confidence falling, controls static
As deployment expanded, confidence in the ability to manage incidents declined. The share of respondents who said they were "very prepared" to respond to an agent incident fell from 47% to 29%. Belief that current regulation covers agent risks dropped from 40% to 26%. The proportion of agents that are monitored and secured barely moved, from 56% to 57%.
Over half of respondents (52%) reported an agent-related security or privacy incident in the past year.
Accountability gaps at every layer
The survey revealed significant shortfalls in control, monitoring, and intervention capabilities:
- On average, only 51% of agents have policy enforced on what they can do.
- Only one in eight organizations can fully reconstruct what an agent did 30 days ago.
- Only 6% can revoke a rogue agent's access within an hour.
Nearly all respondents (97%) said they run agents that call other agents, and 40% connect to other organizations' agents. Yet only 27% define who is accountable across that chain.
More than half (58%) have already had to revoke an agent's access during a live incident. Afterward, only 25% held a named person responsible, and 17% changed nothing.
"Every organization we speak to wants to scale agents, and none of them want to slow down," said Linus Håkansson, CPTO of Gravitee. "The answer is to manage agents the way you would manage any employee with access to sensitive systems. Give each one an identity, enforce what it can do, keep a record, and maintain the ability to revoke access within minutes when something goes wrong."
Sector differences
The report breaks out findings by sector:
- Government and public sector : Have the largest fleets, with 25% running more than 150 agents, but the weakest traceability. Only 8.8% can fully reconstruct an agent action.
- Financial services : Report the strongest controls, yet the most incidents (66%) and the least clarity on ownership (44% say accountability is unclear).
- Healthcare : 63% had an incident, including exposed patient data.
- Telecommunications : Only 21% have a documented process to or revoke an agent.
Framework and disclosure
Gravitee's Agent Accountability Framework defines six principles it says every agent in production should meet: Identity, Sponsor, Role, Authority, Oversight, and Recourse. The research states most organizations fall short on at least one.
Gravitee sells the Gamma platform, which spans Agent Management, API Management, Event Management, Authorization Management, and Identity & Access Management. The survey was commissioned by the company and compares results to its own prior wave in April 2026. Fieldwork for the current wave was conducted in October 2026.
Blundell will discuss the findings at a Gravitee event at the National Gallery, London, on November 18. The full report is available at gravitee.io/state-of-ai-agent-security.
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