Akamai Unveils Agentic Security Framework to Power Trusted AI-Driven Interactions and Commerce
- Unified framework secures and scales interactions across the emerging AI-driven economy
- Know Your Agent protocol verifies identity and human attribution by linking AI agents to authorized human users
- Real-time decisioning layer connects identity and behavior to automate secure digital commerce
- Distributed edge enforcement protects performance while validating every automated request
- Enhanced visibility allows organizations to distinguish, manage, and monetize agentic traffic
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As AI agents increasingly act on behalf of users, every request raises critical questions of identity, intent, and trust. To address this, Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) today announced its unified agentic framework for its Bot & Agent Control solutions, which connects identity, observability, trust, and edge security into a single, real-time decisioning layer to power scalable AI-driven interactions at the edge.
Six tightly integrated pillars form the framework, which are delivered through a coordinated ecosystem of partners:
- Verified identity and human attribution: Through its collaboration with Visa, Akamai is establishing a trusted foundation by authenticating AI agents for secure, permissioned transactions. Integrations with frameworks like Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol are helping define how agents operate in payment environments, setting clearer standards for authorization, permissions, and transaction-level trust. Akamai is also collaborating with Skyfire and Experian to strengthen trusted AI agent identity through the "Know Your Agent" (KYA) framework, which provides a standardized way for agents to declare identity, origin, and intent, linking them to the platforms they operate on and the users they represent. KYA can help ensure that an AI agent is not only legitimate but is also verified as acting on behalf of a specific, authorized individual. This provides the accountability required for merchants to process automated transactions safely.
"Without trusted identity and explicit permissioning, AI agents cannot participate in commerce at scale," said Rubail Birwadker, SVP, Head of Growth Products and Partnerships, Visa. "Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol provides the identity layer that defines how agents are authenticated, authorized, and trusted at the transaction level so businesses and consumers can transact with confidence."
"AI agents are quickly becoming part of digital commerce, but trust will determine how far and how fast adoption grows," said Kathleen Peters, Chief Innovation Officer at Experian. "With the Experian Agent Trust framework, we are helping businesses bring more transparency and accountability to AI-driven interactions by verifying identities, assessing risk, and strengthening confidence in every transaction. Our collaboration with Akamai and other ecosystem leaders reflects the industry's shared commitment to building a secure foundation for agentic commerce that consumers and businesses can trust in real time."
"AI agents can't participate in the economy without trusted identity and the ability to transact," said Amir Sarhangi, Co-Founder and CEO of Skyfire. "Skyfire provides that foundation — enabling agents to authenticate, operate within policy, and access global payment rails. With Akamai, we're bringing that trust layer to the edge, so enterprises can securely enable trusted agents without re-architecting their existing systems."
- User-centric authentication: To maintain security during the handoff between a human and an AI agent, Akamai integrates with identity providers such as Auth0 and Ping Identity. These integrations allow businesses to apply existing security policies, such as behavioral analysis and multi-factor authentication, to the AI agents their customers use. This ensures that the agent's actions remain consistent with the user's established identity, behavior, and intent.
"AI agents introduce a new trust challenge because session-based trust alone is no longer sufficient. Organizations need to understand who they represent, what agents are allowed to do, and how their actions are governed in real time," said Loren Russon, SVP Product Management, Ping Identity. "By combining Ping's runtime identity capabilities with Akamai's edge enforcement and visibility, enterprises can extend identity and access controls to AI-driven interactions with stronger accountability and oversight." - Adaptive trust analysis: The framework enables organizations to dynamically determine the trustworthiness and intent behind every interaction across browsers, bots, and agents. This shifts beyond binary decision-making toward a spectrum of trust that puts the user at the center, allowing customers to identify which interactions support business outcomes and which introduce abuse, fraud, or operational risk.
- Edge-based enforcement: Security and performance requirements for AI interactions are being met through Akamai's distributed edge network. By utilizing high-performance compute, Akamai can evaluate the risk and intent of an agentic request instantly. Processing these decisions at the edge, Akamai helps businesses maintain security and control without compromising the speed of the user experience.
- Content monetization and value exchange: As AI models and agents consume more web content, the framework provides a path for fair compensation. Through partnerships with TollBit and Skyfire, Akamai enables publishers and content owners to negotiate access and facilitate tokenized, pay-per-request models. This allows businesses to monetize their data while providing AI agents with the licensed access they need to function.
"AI agents are the new visitors and shoppers of the internet, and websites need a way to transact with them," said Toshit Panigrahi, Co-Founder and CEO of TollBit. "By using Akamai's ability to identify agentic traffic at the edge and redirect it to TollBit's Agent Site, businesses can send agents to a dedicated, agent-optimized destination where they enforce their own access rules and turn it into a new revenue stream, making AI traffic a source of value rather than a cost." - Operational visibility and traffic analysis: Through TrafficPeak and our industry-leading web security analytics, Akamai provides organizations with a unified view of their web traffic, distinguishing between human users, beneficial AI agents, and malicious bots. These high-scale log analyses allow security and business teams to observe how agents interact with their sites over time, providing the data necessary to refine access controls and commercial strategies.
"AI agents are replacing clicks, acting and handling commerce for us. For that to work, businesses need to recognize not just the agent, but who is behind it and what it's trying to do," said Patrick Sullivan, VP, CTO of Security Strategy, Akamai. "We've built this so that identity informs visibility, visibility drives trust, and trust powers the decisions that let companies safely grow and monetize these new AI interactions. We're giving businesses the confidence to open their doors to AI without compromising security."
Across its ecosystem, Akamai is helping businesses move toward a unified approach to managing bots, agents, and users. The result is a scalable model where every interaction is verified, understood, and acted on in real time.
About Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai's full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world's most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence. Learn more at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on X and LinkedIn.
Press Contact: AkamaiPR@akamai.com
