Entrust: Deploying Autonomous AI Agents at Scale with Trust

AI adoption is already outpacing governance capabilities, says an IBM study backing it with data that shows 77% of Chief Information Officers and Chief Information Security Officers believe this to be true.

While enterprises want to deploy AI agents to do real work, the organisations lack the trust infrastructure needed to govern autonomous actions across systems, partners and business processes. 

Security leaders need to know who authorised an agent, what it is allowed to do and how its actions can be proven after the fact.

The same study notes that 59% of these leaders cite security and compliance as top barriers to deployment.

Entrust aims to fix this problem by bringing together the identity and trust infrastructure through a collaborative programme called Agentic AI Trust Accelerator. 

Moving autonomous AI projects from pilot to production, the programme will facilitate it by providing verifiable identity, real-time authorisation and cryptographic proof of action across systems and partners.

Advancing faster than trust infrastructure

According to Deloitte, keeping a human on the loop is a form of automation that requires strong AI agent governance and oversight. 

The Agentic AI Trust Accelerator aims to close this gap with reference architectures, customer-validated use cases and practical controls.

Leading the programme, Anudeep Parhar, COO for digital infrastructure at Entrust, says: “AI agents are advancing faster than the trust infrastructure needed to govern them. Enterprises need to be able to trust autonomous actions across business processes, partners and systems. 

“Whether organisations are experimenting with AI agents, deploying initial use cases or preparing for broader adoption, they need a trust foundation that can scale with them.”

The programme builds upon the expertise of Entrust in identity verification, cryptographic identity, PKI, certificates and key and secrets management to meet security requirements at any point in the agentic AI journey. 

These capabilities are fundamental to extending trust and governance for autonomous agents acting across applications, systems and organisational boundaries.

Enterprises need cryptographically verifiable identity and proof of action that can travel across systems, partners and workflows to complement platform- or policy-driven controls. 

This infrastructure is particularly vital for organisations operating within regulated sectors.

Need for continuous verification

Emanuel Figueroa, Senior Research Analyst, Identity Security, Worldwide at IDC, explains that governance is becoming a continuous discipline as agentic AI becomes embedded in enterprise operations. 

He says: “As agentic AI becomes embedded in enterprise operations, governance is evolving from a point-in-time exercise to a continuous discipline. While AI agents increasingly perform tasks traditionally associated with human workers, their autonomy introduces new challenges for oversight, accountability and risk management. 

“Organisations therefore need more than static controls; they need continuous verification throughout the agent lifecycle. The goal is not simply to control AI agents but to operate with confidence that they are appropriately authorised, governed and acting within established business, security and regulatory boundaries.”

Initial work with the Accelerator programme will focus on four areas of importance to workflows in regulated and compliance-driven environments: 

1. Identity - verifiable human and agent identity, so that every agent action can be traced back to a confirmed human principal and unique agent
2. Authorisation - real-time authorisation, so agents act only within approved policies, roles and delegated authority, with a ‘human in the loop’ for critical decisions
3. Cryptographic Trust - cryptographic assurance for agent operations, protecting the keys, certificates and secrets and signing capabilities agents use to authenticate and transact securely
4. Accountability - proof of action, a cryptographically verifiable record for regulators, customers and internal risk teams

Anthony Ball, CEO of Entrust, says: “Agentic AI will reshape how enterprises operate but trust will determine how quickly organisations can move from experimentation to production. 

“Entrust is helping customers build the identity, authorisation and cryptographic foundations required for autonomous systems operating in real-world environments.”