IBM has unveiled new capabilities at TechXchange 2026 to help enterprises manage AI agents with greater security and control. The company is integrating agent discovery, verified identities, access controls, and performance evaluation to ensure that organizations can track agent ownership, limit access, and monitor actions across business systems.
According to Gartner, by 2028, the average Fortune 500 enterprise will deploy over 150,000 AI agents. However, only 13% of organizations believe they have adequate governance in place. IBM's new solutions aim to address these challenges by providing a unified framework for managing agents across platforms like Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Gemini.
HashiCorp Vault, a key component of IBM's offering, extends its secrets management capabilities to AI agents. It issues secured, short-lived credentials that enforce least-privilege access and enable real-time revocation if an agent attempts unauthorized actions. This integration helps reduce the risk of exposed credentials and limits access to configured permissions.
IBM watsonx Orchestrate is designed to unify agent discovery, containment, and evaluation. It allows organizations to find agents built in third-party environments, run them in isolated sandboxes, and shut down any rogue agents with a kill switch. The solution also includes post-quantum encryption and centralized visibility across Vault environments.