What is Know Your Agent (KYA)?

Organizations familiar with electronic know your customer requirements understand the importance of identity assurance in digital systems.

As automation expands, organizations must also know their agents. Know Your Agent (KYA) refers to verifying and managing the identity of AI systems, bots, and other autonomous non-human actors.

Just as KYC reduces identity risk among people, KYA reduces identity risk among automated systems by connecting agents to verified owners and enforceable controls.

KYA establishes governance, management, and auditability, ensuring agents operate only within approved boundaries.

• Autonomous agents are rapidly proliferating inside digital systems, increasing fraud and security risk.
• Know Your Agent (KYA) extends the principles of Know Your Customer (KYC) to non-human actors.
• KYA addresses challenges such as agent identity, ownership, and fragmented tracking.
• KYA supports identity verification, accountability, and transparency so organizations can scale automation responsibly.

AI agents were once limited to narrow, isolated workflows. Today, they operate across accounts, transactions, APIs, and data pipelines.

Agents increasingly interact with other agents and systems without human involvement, making oversight difficult at scale.

This creates new fraud and security risks. A single compromised or manipulated agent can trigger cascading failures.

Without identity controls, organizations struggle to determine which agent initiated an action and who is accountable.

KYA introduces identity verification, governance, and traceability so organizations know who agents represent and how they are allowed to operate.

KYA applies wherever AI agents interact with systems, data, or users.

In AI-driven customer interactions such as chatbots and virtual assistants, KYA verifies agent authenticity, enforces role-based permissions, and maintains audit trails.

In automated financial workflows, including payments and transactions, KYA binds actions to verified agent identities and enforces limits to reduce fraud risk.

For third-party integrations and APIs, KYA authenticates agents, limits access, and monitors behavior for anomalies.

Internally, KYA increases visibility and control over scripts and automated workflows, tracking ownership, execution history, and unauthorized changes.

Traditional identity systems were designed for people, not agents.

Agents are dynamic, frequently updated, and often identified only by API keys or tokens rather than persistent identities.

Ownership is difficult to establish because agents may be created, deployed, and maintained by different teams or organizations.

Inconsistent identities across IAM systems, API gateways, and cloud platforms create tracking and audit gaps.

Without unified identity and auditability, organizations face blind spots that increase fraud, compliance, and operational risk.

Know Your Customer focuses on verifying human users through documents, biometrics, and data validation.

In discussions of KYC vs. AML, KYC is the identity-focused component of broader compliance requirements.

KYA builds on this trust model but applies it to agents acting on behalf of people or organizations.

Rather than replacing KYC, KYA extends identity verification principles—identity binding, authentication, and auditability—to autonomous entities.

• Define the agent identity. Assign each agent a unique, persistent identity bound to a verified owner.
• Establish ownership. Clearly document responsibility for agent creation, updates, and decommissioning.
• Verify origin and behavior. Ensure agents come from trusted sources and operate within defined parameters.
• Monitor and govern activity. Track agent behavior across systems and enforce limits, alerts, and shutdown controls.

Many organizations already use elements such as identity and access management solutions, fraud detection tools, and API security. KYA extends these controls to non-human actors.

Automation delivers value only when it is trusted.

KYA builds trust through verified identities, accountability, and transparency.

Verified agent identities ensure organizations know which agent is acting and who owns it.

Accountability enables actions to be traced back to responsible owners, discouraging misuse and negligence.

Transparency provides visibility into agent behavior, supporting auditability, investigation, and compliance.

As automation becomes more pervasive, identity verification must extend beyond human users.

Know Your Agent builds on the principles behind Know Your Customer solutions by applying identity assurance to AI agents.

By assigning persistent identities, enforcing ownership, and enabling traceability, organizations can reduce fraud risk and strengthen compliance.

With identity verification solutions, credentialing, and integration into existing identity systems, Entrust helps organizations apply proven identity principles to emerging agent use cases.

This foundation enables organizations to scale automation with confidence while maintaining trust with customers, partners, and regulators.