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Mythos: Five Identity Security Best Practices

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AI-driven attacks are accelerating privileged identity risk, making continuous discovery, just-in-time access, and AI agent governance essential.

Mythos signals a major shift in identity security: AI can now expose privileged access gaps faster than traditional controls can keep up. This one-pager helps identity security leaders see where their programs need to adapt, from access and secrets to AI agents, and what to prioritize as AI-driven risk accelerates. Download now to get insights on the best practices shaping the next phase of identity security.

Mythos:
Five Best Practices for Identity Security Leaders

How to stay ahead of AI-accelerated attacks on privileged identity

9 hrs
Mean time from disclosure to exploitation in 2026, down from years pre-AI
10,000+
Vulnerabilities surfaced during Mythos pre-release testing
$0
Cost to reproduce much of this capability with open-weight models

The threat landscape just changed. Frontier AI models like Mythos surface vulnerabilities at machine speed — and open-weight models make similar capabilities freely available. The mean time from disclosure to confirmed exploitation has collapsed from years to 9 hours. Meanwhile, AI agents are multiplying the privileged identity attack surface faster than most teams can track. 

Five best practices for staying ahead of AI-accelerated attacks 

1 BEST PRACTICE
Continuously discover
every identity
Map every human, machine, and AI identity across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments — including nested groups, inherited permissions, and role chains — before attackers find them.
2 BEST PRACTICE
Eliminate standing privilege with just-in-time access
Replace persistent elevated access with time-limited, task-scoped permissions. A stolen credential has nothing to abuse when privilege doesn’t exist between tasks.
3 BEST PRACTICE
Minimize and broker secrets
Vault admin passwords, SSH keys, service accounts, and OAuth apps. Rotate on a schedule. Broker access so credentials are injected at connection time and never touch an admin’s machine. Eliminate secrets entirely where modern auth (OIDC, SAML) allows.
 
4 BEST PRACTICE
Authorize continuously, not just at the door
An AI-driven attack can begin with legitimate access and escalate mid-session. Point-of-entry checks are insufficient. Instead, organizations should also deploy policy engines that continuously evaluate user, device, resource, and risk context to authorize access at runtime.
5 BEST PRACTICE
Treat AI agents as first-class privileged identities
AI agents authenticate, hold secrets, and act autonomously — making them a critical attack surface. Apply the same discipline as human accounts: discover every agent, vault their secrets, scope just-in-time credentials, govern sessions, and maintain human override.