What is Agentic AI? | Definition

What is agentic AI?

Agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence systems designed to work autonomously and with purpose.

Unlike traditional automation, which follows static rules or workflows, agentic AI can recognize context, measure intent, make decisions based on real-time data, and take actions to achieve a goal, adapting as conditions change.

What role does agentic AI play in identity security?

Agentic AI evaluates access requests, user behavior, device data, risk signals, and policy parameters in real time to decide whether access should be granted, escalated, or denied without waiting for manual input.

What are the key characteristics of agentic AI?

• It's autonomous, enabling it to make decisions and take actions without constant human interactions
• It pulls in context to understand users, systems, and environmental signals before acting
• It's adaptive, learns, and adjusts based on new data and outcomes
• It operates to achieve defined security and compliance outcomes with guardrails

Why should you care about agentic AI?

Agentic AI moves beyond static rules and manual approvals. It allows security teams to scale intelligent decision-making, reduce human error, and enforce least privilege at the pace and complexity of today's hybrid environments.

Example of Agentic AI in use:

An agentic AI system might detect a user accessing sensitive systems from an unusual location at an unusual time and automatically deny or escalate the request based on risk, not a predefined rule.