Software agents overstep limits at 65% of enterprises: new report

Enterprise Management Associates and Cequence Security have put out a report called “Agents Without Guardrails,” and it looks at what happens when enterprise software agents drift past the boundaries they were supposed to stay within.

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If you’re already deploying agents, the number to pay attention to is 65%: in the report, 65% of 202 enterprise technology and security leaders said they’d seen agents operate outside their intended scope.

The breakdown gets more specific from there. According to the report, 29% of those incidents caused measurable harm, 36% were near-misses, and 46% said agents are already running across multiple production workflows.

The report is especially blunt on access controls. While 94% of respondents said they were confident their agents weren’t over-provisioned, only 33% said they actually enforce least-privilege access, which leaves broad standing permissions and written policies that aren’t enforced as a core weakness.

If you’re responsible for these systems, this is a report you’ll probably want to read. It says 55% still need hours and manual intervention to contain problems, and 3.5% to 4% said they first learned something was wrong from outsiders, including customers. The report also points to 2026 incidents involving autonomous or semi-autonomous tools, which show how fast a productivity win can become a security issue.

You can get the report from Enterprise Management Associates and Cequence Security.