A recent Softonic piece raised the alarm: machine agents now log in as employees, hold OAuth tokens, and touch mailboxes, docs, and CRM records the same way a real person would. Almost none of the identity stacks that were built for humans handle those agents cleanly. The best apps for AI agent identity security on desktop treat non-human identities as first-class: their own directory, their own approval workflow, their own audit log, their own revocation path.
We looked at seven identity and secrets tools that shipped or updated in the past year and expose an agent identity primitive. Some are enterprise identity platforms, some are secret managers with policy engines, some are open source. All of them help us answer “which agent did that action, at what time, with what token, and who approved the token”.
What to look for in a machine agent identity tool
Not every secret manager is an identity manager. Before installing anything, work out which of these matters.
- Distinct primitives for humans, service accounts, and agents.
- Short-lived credentials issued on demand, not baked into a repo.
- OAuth token brokering with per-tenant scopes.
- Approval workflow so a human signs off before a high-impact scope is granted.
- Audit log with the agent, the token, and the action tied together.
- Revocation that actually invalidates all sessions, not just the next issuance.
- Open source or self-hosted for anyone who cannot ship this to a third party.
Quick comparison table
| App | Best for | Free plan | Starting price | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HashiCorp Vault | Secret brokering with policy | Yes (Community) | Enterprise paid | Dynamic secrets and revocation |
| 1Password Extended Access Management | Human plus agent identity | Yes (trial) | Enterprise paid | Non-human identity provisioning |
| Astrix Security | Third-party agent inventory | Trial | Enterprise paid | Discovery of shadow agents |
| Oasis Security | Non-human identity lifecycle | Trial | Enterprise paid | Automated NHI rotation |
| Teleport | Access proxy with short-lived certs | Yes (Community) | Enterprise paid | Certificate-based agent auth |
| Descope | Passwordless plus agent flows | Yes (free tier) | Freemium | Drag-and-drop agent flows |
| StrongDM | Zero-trust access broker | Trial | Enterprise paid | Just-in-time database access |
| OpenBao | Open-source Vault fork | Yes | Free | Community governance |
The apps
1. HashiCorp Vault – Best for dynamic secret brokering behind a policy engine
HashiCorp Vault is the veteran secret manager most engineering teams already know. Its dynamic secrets feature issues short-lived credentials for databases and cloud accounts on demand, and its policy engine can gate them behind an approval workflow. For AI agents specifically, its OIDC and Kubernetes auth backends let an agent’s runtime identity trade for scoped secrets without a static key.
Where it falls short: the learning curve is steep, and the Community edition lacks Enterprise features like namespaces and Sentinel policies.
Pricing:
- Community edition is free.
- Enterprise pricing on request.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux; API-first, so agents anywhere can call it.
Download: HashiCorp or GitHub.
Bottom line: the default answer for teams that already run infrastructure at scale.
2. 1Password Extended Access Management – Best for tying humans and agents to the same identity graph
1Password Extended Access Management builds on the vault-and-team model most companies already trust and adds non-human identity provisioning. Agents get their own vault, their own approvals, and their own audit log; the same admin who onboards a new engineer can onboard the agent that engineer supervises.
Where it falls short: the pricing is enterprise-first; small teams pay per seat that includes agents.
Pricing:
- Free trial.
- Enterprise pricing.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android.
Download: 1Password.com.
Bottom line: the pick when the existing 1Password deployment already anchors the team.
3. Astrix Security – Best for discovering the agents nobody registered
Astrix Security is a discovery and posture tool. It hooks into Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, GitHub, Salesforce, and Slack, then inventories every OAuth grant and API token in the environment. For an AI agent story, it answers “which agents already have access we did not grant on purpose”.
Where it falls short: it is not a broker, so mitigation happens in the source system, not in Astrix itself.
Pricing:
- Free trial.
- Enterprise pricing.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux via the web console.
Download: AstrixSecurity.com.
Bottom line: the audit tool that runs the day before any real cleanup.
4. Oasis Security – Best for non-human identity lifecycle
Oasis Security manages non-human identity end to end: discovery, ownership assignment, rotation, and revocation. Its lifecycle model has ownership as a first-class attribute, so a departing engineer’s agents get flagged for reassignment before their tokens quietly outlive them.
Where it falls short: the platform expects a decent existing identity stack. Small teams see less value.
Pricing:
- Trial.
- Enterprise pricing.
Platforms: cross-platform via web console.
Download: OasisSecurity.com.
Bottom line: the pick for a security team that already sees non-human identity as its problem, not a side quest.
5. Teleport – Best for short-lived certificate-based agent auth
Teleport is an access proxy. It issues short-lived SSH, database, and Kubernetes certificates in exchange for an identity assertion, so an agent that runs a job never needs a static credential. The audit log ties the cert back to the agent identity and the request.
Where it falls short: the proxy is another piece of infrastructure to run, and Community edition caps some features.
Pricing:
- Community edition is free.
- Enterprise pricing.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Download: GoTeleport.com or GitHub.
Bottom line: the pick when SSH and database access dominate the agent’s job.
6. Descope – Best for flow-first authentication and agent onboarding
Descope is a passwordless CIAM platform with a visual flow builder. Agents can slot into the same flows as humans with different steps and different scopes, and the free tier is enough to prototype a real deployment.
Where it falls short: the visual builder is opinionated; edge cases push us back into code.
Pricing:
- Free tier.
- Paid tiers by monthly active users.
Platforms: cross-platform via SDKs.
Download: Descope.com.
Bottom line: the pick for a team building an agent flow from scratch, not retrofitting one.
7. StrongDM – Best for zero-trust access with just-in-time approvals
StrongDM brokers database, server, cloud, and Kubernetes access. Approval workflows are first-class, and access grants can be time-boxed. For agents that only need database access to complete a job, StrongDM issues a scoped session, logs it, and revokes it when the job ends.
Where it falls short: the pricing scales with resource count, not headcount, which surprises budgets.
Pricing:
- Trial.
- Enterprise pricing.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Download: StrongDM.com.
Bottom line: the pick when the concern is data-plane access, not just the OAuth token layer.
How to pick the right one
- If we already run infrastructure and want a broker: HashiCorp Vault or OpenBao.
- If we run 1Password across the team: 1Password Extended Access Management is the shortest path.
- If we need to inventory what agents already exist: Astrix Security.
- If we need lifecycle for non-human identities across systems: Oasis Security.
- If the agents mostly SSH or hit databases: Teleport or StrongDM.
- If we are building a fresh agent flow: Descope.
- If we need open-source only: HashiCorp Vault Community or OpenBao.
- Never leave a long-lived personal token in a script. Every tool on this list can replace it.
FAQ
Why can’t we treat AI agents like service accounts? Service accounts are a poor fit because they usually lack the approval, ownership, and revocation semantics agents need. An agent may hold delegated user consent, which a plain service account cannot express.
Is HashiCorp Vault enough on its own? For secret brokering yes, for identity governance no. Pair it with a discovery or lifecycle tool if the environment is large.
What is OpenBao and how does it compare to Vault? OpenBao is a Linux Foundation fork of Vault Community. Feature-parity with the Community edition, community governance.
Do we need a paid tier for any of this? The Community editions of Vault, Teleport, and OpenBao are enough to get started. Enterprise features become interesting past a couple of hundred agents.
How do we audit an agent’s actions after the fact? Every tool on this list ties the audit log to the identity that requested the credential. Feed those logs to a SIEM for correlation with the downstream system.
