Enterprise access models designed primarily for employees are being stretched by service accounts, automation, and emerging AI agents. Drawing on my experience implementing enterprise SSO and role-based access controls and building large-scale platforms across retail, financial services, and biotech, this session translates proven platform-engineering lessons into a practical identity roadmap.

Attendees will learn how to distinguish human, workload, and agent identities; separate authentication from authorization; apply least privilege; make access decisions observable; and establish ownership and lifecycle controls for non-human identities. The session will also examine common challenges such as role sprawl, standing privileges, weak auditability, and legacy access models.

Using vendor-neutral patterns and anonymized scenarios, participants will leave with a practical checklist for assessing their current identity architecture and preparing it for safer AI-enabled automation.