IBM is extending HashiCorp Vault to AI agents. At its TechXchange 2026 conference, the company is also introducing Agent Identity and new watsonx Orchestrate features to discover, isolate, and evaluate agents. Each agent is thus assigned an owner, a verified identity, and credentials that expire quickly.
IBM wants companies to know exactly who manages an AI agent, what it can access, and what it does. To achieve this, the company is combining agent discovery, verified identities, access control, and evaluation. The announcements coincide with TechXchange 2026.
HashiCorp Vault has long managed secrets and credentials for applications and services. Now, Vault will also issue short-lived, protected credentials to AI agents. As a result, each agent can access only the systems it truly needs.
Agent Identity records, for each agent, the owner, the lifecycle status, and the permissions granted. It shares this context with Vault. If an agent attempts to access something outside its permissions, access is denied and the session is immediately terminated. Vault 2.2 also provides agents with their own accounts, automatically renews credentials, and supports post-quantum encryption. Secure Hub (public preview) provides a centralized overview of Vault environments. It also integrates with Nvidia OpenShell, a secure runtime for agents.
Orchestrate looks beyond IBM
What about agents built outside of IBM? watsonx Orchestrate, which already connects to more than 80 enterprise applications, is gaining a Discover feature. It finds agents, models, and MCP servers on Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry, and Google Gemini. With Contain, agents run in isolated sandboxes, complete with a kill switch. Both features are in tech preview. Evaluate is generally available and tests agents for quality, accuracy, and compliance, providing insight into model and token usage per agent.
Additionally, Terraform Policy is now generally available, while a Terraform Developer Portal and a remote MCP server are entering public preview. Developers and agents can use these to adjust infrastructure via approved configurations. IBM Concert helps detect high-risk vulnerabilities. IBM Z Atlas (public preview) maps the entire z/OS stack to test changes in advance. Integration Intelligence Hub is still in tech preview.
Tip: HashiCorp brings stacks to Terraform and promises optimal scalability