How Identity and Transparency Will Anchor AI Growth in 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve at a pace that outstrips the ability of many organisations and employees to adapt. While AI is already delivering gains in scalability and operational efficiency, it is simultaneously exposing deep shortcomings in governance, skills, and security readiness.

The emergence of agentic AI—autonomous systems capable of acting on behalf of users or organisations—amplifies both the opportunity and the risk. New attack vectors, such as agent-in-the-middle threats and a lack of transparency in automated decision-making have the potential to undermine customer trust.

As AI becomes embedded in everyday digital experiences, trust will increasingly determine which organisations succeed in the digital economy. Customers are beginning to assess companies not only on price or performance, but on measurable signals of identity protection, privacy, and AI governance.

Prediction 1

AI’s exponential growth will be shadowed by looming security concerns.

In our global consumer survey last year, 68% of respondents reported using AI, up from 41% in 2024, underscoring how quickly these technologies are becoming embedded in daily life. At the same time, 75% of consumers say they are more concerned about the security of their personal data than they were five years ago. This tension defines the current AI moment.

Every new AI capability expands the attack surface. Increased automation introduces more systems, more integrations, and more entry points for adversaries. Threat actors are already exploiting AI for phishing, social engineering, and automated reconnaissance, while organisations struggle to keep pace with the security implications of the tools they deploy.

Agentic AI compounds this challenge. Autonomous agents can make decisions, initiate actions, and access systems without continuous human oversight. Despite their rapid uptake, understanding remains limited. According to BCG, only around a third of workers in the Asia-Pacific region report a strong grasp of how agentic systems function. This gap creates fertile ground for misconfiguration, misuse, and abuse.

Meanwhile, organisations have not updated their governance frameworks quickly enough; lacking clear accountability for AI behaviour, insufficient controls over agent permissions, and inadequate processes for monitoring how AI systems operate once deployed. Without investment in education, oversight, and security-by-design, AI’s growth will continue to be accompanied by escalating and increasingly complex security risks.

Prediction 2

Building consumer trust in AI through radical transparency.

Autonomous AI agents are already recommending products, negotiating prices, and completing payments on users’ behalf. While this automation promises convenience, it also introduces unease. Bain & Co. research indicates that around half of consumers are uncomfortable with AI managing entire transactions without human involvement.

Restoring confidence will require more than incremental disclosure; it will demand radical transparency. In practice, this means making AI activity visible, understandable, and accountable to users. Customers must be able to see when AI is acting, what data it is using, why decisions are being made, and where responsibility ultimately lies.

Another threat to trust is the widening identity crisis. Only 17% of consumers fully trust organisations to manage their digital identities, while 81% express concern about social engineering scams.

Decentralised identity models offer a path forward. Through verifiable credentials and selective disclosure, individuals can prove specific attributes—such as age or authorisation—without exposing unnecessary personal data. This reduces the impact of breaches and limits the value of stolen information.

Adoption of cryptographic verification, data minimisation, and consent-driven identity sharing is becoming a must-have. Combined with radical transparency, organisations can demonstrate respect for user autonomy while defending against increasingly sophisticated fraud and social engineering attacks.

Prediction 3

The new strategic imperative is continuous identity verification.

In 2026, identity will function as a universal language of accountability. The emphasis will shift from asserting who or what an actor is to providing verifiable proof of actions taken, policies followed, and consent obtained. This standard will apply equally to human employees and machine agents.

Organisations that can validate both identity and intent will set a new benchmark for digital trust, as it will act as a bulwark against emerging threats such as the agent-in-the-middle attack. Unlike traditional intrusions, these threats involve actors—often AI agents—that were legitimately onboarded but later compromised or repurposed. Once inside, they can operate under the organisation’s authority, making malicious activity harder to detect.

These risks have decidedly rendered static credentials and one-time authentication checks surplus to requirements. Many breaches begin with malware that inherits valid permissions, enabling attackers to move laterally and act undetected.

This is where runtime assurance becomes critical. Runtime assurance extends identity verification beyond access requests into continuous monitoring of behaviour during execution. It evaluates whether actions align with expected patterns, declared intent, and policy constraints, and it enables rapid intervention when deviations occur. By combining continuous identity verification with runtime assurance, organisations can detect compromised agents or malicious activity as it unfolds, rather than after damage is done.

Agentic identities must ultimately be treated like employees. Trust should act as the enforcement layer for AI systems, ensuring that access is earned, time-bound, adaptive, and governed by zero-standing privileges. Machine agents should receive only the permissions required for a specific task and only for the duration necessary, dramatically reducing the blast radius of compromise.

The Year Accountability Becomes the New Currency of Trust

As AI agents assume greater responsibility across digital workflows, identity trust will become foundational to organisational security. Autonomous systems can be exploited by threat actors, enabling theft, disruption, and harm at machine speed. In response, organisations must create environments where trust is measurable, visible, and continuously enforced.

Implicit trust is no longer sufficient. Verified trust—grounded in continuous identity verification, runtime assurance, and radical transparency—must underpin every digital interaction. Just as importantly, organisations must clearly communicate how AI influences customer experiences and decisions. In the AI-driven economy of 2026, accountability will be the currency that determines who earns and keeps customer trust.