Between malware, online impersonation, and account takeovers, there are enough digital security problems out there as it is. And with the rise of agentic AI , more activity is being carried out by agents on behalf of humans—creating different risks that something could go awry.

Now, working with initial contributions from Google and Mastercard , the authentication-focused industry association known as the FIDO Alliance said on Tuesday that it will launch a pair of working groups to develop industry standards for validating and protecting payments and other transactions carried out by AI agents.

The goal is to produce a protective baseline that can be adopted across industries. This way, users can authorize agent actions using mechanisms that can't easily be phished, or taken over by a bad actor to give an agent rogue instructions.…