AI agents

Google DeepMind researchers have mapped a vulnerability category called 'AI Agent Traps'. The source says it lets attackers manipulate, deceive, and exploit AI agents that visit malicious web content.

AWS submitted a response to NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) Request for Information on securing agentic AI systems, which act autonomously by connecting to tools and APIs and using LLMs to plan and execute actions at machine speed. The response identifies four foundational security principles and the architectural building blocks that implement them. The source excerpt ends before the remaining principles are described.

Simon Willison was a guest on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast, in an episode released 2 April 2026, discussing agentic engineering. The source highlights his view that GPT 5.1 and Claude Opus 4.5 marked an inflection point in November, after which coding agents mostly do what they are told. He argues that software engineers are a bellwether for other information workers.

Variance has raised $21.5 million for its compliance investigation platform, which is powered by AI agents. The company has raised $26 million in total funding, and the latest investment is intended to fuel platform growth.

SecurityWeek promotes a webinar on what Agentic AI can and cannot solve today. The session also covers real-world breach scenarios tied to disconnected applications.

The article argues that enterprise AI is shifting from chatbots that answer questions to AI agents that reason, plan, and act across enterprise systems autonomously. It states that the security risk of an agent depends on its access to systems and data and on how independently it can act without human approval.

The v5.5.0 release of the MITRE ATLAS knowledge base adds new techniques, including AI Agent Tool Poisoning, AI Supply Chain Rug Pull, Machine Compromise variants, and Cost Harvesting variants. It also adds case studies such as LLMSmith, the Poisoned Postmark MCP Server email exfiltration, and Model Distillation Campaigns Targeting Anthropic Claude, and updates mitigations including Code Signing, AI Telemetry Logging, and Segmentation of AI Agent Components.

Microsoft's blog post discusses the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications (2026), which outlines risks for autonomous systems that act across workflows using real identities, data access and tools. The post explores the list's key findings and highlights practical mitigations grounded in Agent 365 and foundational capabilities in Microsoft Copilot Studio. Microsoft AI Red Team members helped review the list before publication.

Okta CEO Todd McKinnon discusses how the company is responding to pressure from AI, including the idea that customers could build their own tools instead of paying for SaaS. The interview also covers managing AI agent identity, which McKinnon describes as lying between a person and a system, and the need for a kill switch at the agent level.

Anecdotes co-founder and CEO Yair Kuznitsov argues that enterprise GRC teams hesitate to adopt agentic GRC mainly because of an identity and value question, not technology. He contends that agents can take over evidence gathering, remediation tracking and audit cycles, so practitioners must redefine their role around risk management and the judgment needed to design and oversee agent logic.

AWS describes security principles for deploying agentic AI in financial services, focusing on observability of agentic workflows and fine-grained control over agent tool access permissions. The post presents seven design principles and implementation guidance for meeting regulatory requirements, including SR 11-7 in the US, SS1/23 in the UK, and ECB guidelines in the EU.