White House cyber official: identity security matters more than ever in the age of AI
White House cyber official: identity security matters more than ever in the age of AI
https://cyberscoop.com/white-house-federal-identity-security-ai-risks/
Publish Date: 2026-05-14 16:17:00
Source Domain: cyberscoop.com
As AI becomes more integrated into federal IT (and attacker toolsets) government agencies will need to focus their resources on regulating and monitoring the identities that access their network, a top White House cybersecurity official said Thursday.
Nick Polk, branch director for federal cybersecurity in the Executive Office of the President, said that while AI models will present unique threats to federal networks, they will still generally require trusted access first, something defenders can use to their advantage.
“I think the important thing is that in many cases in order to use and exploit the vulnerabilities that [AI] might find, or use them in a manner…that could be malicious or adversarial, the first thing you have to do is get into the network,” Polk said at the Rubrik Public Sector Summit presented by FedScoop. “There are some cases where your software is facing the internet, there’s a little bit of an easier solution there, but most times you have to get into the network.”
That often means exploiting the access an employee, contractor or third-party vendor has to your systems and data. Even in an AI-powered future, the network security boundary still matters, providing organizations with meaningful control over who gets access to their systems and data and how.
“That’s really where strong identity is still really critical in order to [first] repel an attempted exploitation before it can happen or, [second,] identify very quickly that this person or this machine really shouldn’t be on the network” or is behaving anomalously,” Polk said.
However, even before large language models emerged, cybercriminals and foreign adversaries were increasingly compromising organizations not with malware or sophisticated exploits, but by gaining network access through stolen accounts, credentials, and other trusted assets.
Federal identity security, already a concern, is now set to become more critical in the age of…
