AI agents

An opinion piece by a SANS Technology Institute author argues that agentic AI lets attackers act autonomously, moving beyond the drafting assistance of earlier chatbots. It claims this lowers the skill needed for attacks while speeding up experienced operators.

Speaker Kristen Thompson's article warns that attackers are bypassing AI security controls by reaching the legacy infrastructure AI agents depend on, rather than attacking the AI layer directly. The article cites that 70% of organizations grant AI systems more privileged access than a human in the same role, and reports a 76% incident rate for over-privileged AI versus 17% for those enforcing least privilege. It walks through a modeled attack path where an over-permissioned S3 bucket holding Salesforce exports and an unpatched perimeter server lead into an AI agent environment.

At Zenith Live 2026 in Vienna, Zscaler argued that zero trust should serve as the control plane for AI adoption in Southeast Asia, where AI agents are becoming digital workers and regulators are tightening data residency rules. The company is extending its Zero Trust Exchange and SASE platform to AI agents, unmanaged devices, multi-cloud workloads and B2B partners. The article also presents the author's own recommendations for Southeast Asian CISOs.

A 2026 CSA survey commissioned by Token Security reports that 82% of organizations found at least one AI agent created without the knowledge of security, IT, or governance teams in the past year. The article argues that AI agents are identities and that most enterprises lack governance models for them, with security teams needing to know what each agent can access. It also reports that 65% of organizations experienced a security incident involving an AI agent in the past year, with 61% reporting exposure or mishandling of sensitive data.

The article argues that enterprise security stacks fail because specialized tools (threat intelligence platforms, vulnerability scanners, BAS tools and SIEMs) generate data without closing the loop, leaving breach dwell times around 43 days. It contrasts assistive AI, which waits to be asked, with agentic AI, which autonomously correlates threat intelligence, validates controls and routes remediation to support Gartner's CTEM framework.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon describes a future where AI agents coordinate across apps and wearable devices, such as smart glasses, earbuds, pins and watches, replacing the need to open individual apps. Amon told CNBC that Qualcomm is working on more than 40 AI gadget designs and is most bullish on smart glasses. The article notes that privacy will be a key concern as agents become more pervasive.

Cisco announced an agreement to acquire identity lifecycle security company WideField Security to strengthen Splunk's Agentic SOC. No financial details have been publicly disclosed. WideField's platform discovers human and non-human identities, maps exposures across accounts and roles, and detects misconfigurations in authentication policies.

The Hacker News, in a sponsored contributed piece, describes orphaned AI agents, which keep running after their creator leaves, and standing privileges, which retain access the agent no longer needs. It argues that traditional access tools miss these because they cannot tell whose identity an agent borrows. The piece promotes a SailPoint and The Hacker News webinar on the topic.

Check Point announces a collaboration with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to help organizations deploy trusted AI agents at enterprise scale. The post argues that agents, unlike chatbots, retrieve information, invoke tools, access enterprise systems and take actions on users' behalf, so organizations need visibility and control over their behavior.

Microsoft Security has moved its multi-model agentic scanning system, codename MDASH, from a benchmark-topping research project into active use by Microsoft engineering teams across Windows, Azure, and identity systems. The system orchestrates a panel of specialized AI agents to discover, validate, and help remediate vulnerabilities, with findings flowing into Microsoft Defender, GitHub, and Azure DevOps pipelines.

Estonia's AI Council proposes government-backed digital identities for AI agents, specifying what powers a person or company delegates to them, such as viewing data, editing documents, or making payments up to a set limit. Prime Minister Kristen Michal supports the plan, aiming to make Estonia the first country with an official digital identity for AI agents. No timeline for implementation was given.

Databricks reported that annualized revenue rose over 80% year over year to $6.9 billion, up from $5.4 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter. CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC that rising consumption from AI agents is raising the company's costs, and he said its gross margin will go lower, declining to give the current figure.

Google published its AI Control Roadmap, a framework for building and managing advanced AI agents deployed internally. The approach adds a system-level security layer on top of traditional safeguards such as sandboxing, endpoint security and prompt injection resistance, and treats internal agents as potentially misaligned. The roadmap models untrusted agents as insider threats using the MITRE ATT&CK framework, and uses trusted AI supervisors to monitor and block harmful agent actions.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC that the chip designer is working on over 40 designs of new AI devices, including wearables such as jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins, and watches. He said AI agents will become the new app and the new center of digital life, and that smart glasses shipments are in the order of multiple tens of millions per year.

Salesforce said on Monday it will buy AI customer service platform Fin, formerly known as Intercom, for about $3.6 billion. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal 2027 year, is meant to complement its Agentforce platform.