Seventy-nine percent of South African organisations experienced at least three successful identity-related breaches in the last 12 months, driven largely by the explosion of agentic and machine identities. This is according to the Identity Security Landscape Report 2026 by CyberArk, a Palo Alto Networks company, which reveals that the attack surface is expanding faster than businesses can defend it.
Ninety-four percent of businesses have already deployed AI agents, yet governance frameworks are struggling to keep pace. Machine identities vastly outnumber human ones, with a ratio of 92 to 1. All three identity types are expected to grow over the next 12 months. Machine and AI agent identities are expected to see the steepest increases, anticipated by 84% and 82% of respondents, respectively, while 59% expect human identities to follow suit.
Among those already anticipating identity growth, the main factors driving this are machine identities such as IoT and bots (53%), the adoption of more cloud applications (52%), and AI and LLMs (51%). With digital expansion overtaking workforce growth as the primary driver of new identities, security teams are under increasing pressure to extend visibility, control and governance across an ever more complex identity mix.
