The New Insider Threat: Autonomous Systems With Excessive Permissions

Security leaders are increasingly treating overprivileged AI agents and autonomous systems as the new insider threat. Machine identities — including AI copilots, RPA bots, service accounts, and CI/CD pipeline credentials — often accumulate excessive permissions with no owner, no expiration, and no monitoring. Real-world incidents like the Amazon Q VS Code extension supply-chain attack and the EchoLeak vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot illustrate how compromised machine identities can cause catastrophic damage. Experts recommend enforcing least-privilege and just-in-time access, continuous behavioral monitoring, software supply chain governance, centralized non-human identity inventory with lifecycle management, and multi-party approval for high-impact automated actions.