Raising the Cybersecurity Stakes: Ante up for the Agentic Era
Raising the Cybersecurity Stakes: Ante up for the Agentic Era
https://www.securityweek.com/raising-the-cybersecurity-stakes-ante-up-for-the-agentic-era/
Publish Date: 2026-05-28 07:15:00
Source Domain: www.securityweek.com
Organizations are making a big bet on AI, but if their plans don’t include a cybersecurity strategy, then they are gambling with their future.
Over the past few years, GenAI platforms have matured from pattern-matching large language models (LLMs) to tool-calling agents. Many enterprises now report that the majority of their code is written by AI. However, threat actors have also upped the ante – agentic attacks shape offense faster than human defenses can respond.
In the last decade, the fundamental questions of cybersecurity have evolved. When CISOs asked, “What do I have?”, the industry provided context on assets. When they asked, “What is important?”, the industry provided prioritization. When they asked, “How do I fix it?”, the industry provided remediation.
Now, virtually every cybersecurity solution has implemented conversational AI that can make recommendations, but manual remediation cannot keep pace with AI-powered cyberattacks.
The agentic era is forcing manual remediation processes to evolve rapidly. CISOs are now facing machine-speed attacks and asking, “How do I agent?” The industry must provide remediation at scale.
AI Is the New Perimeter
AI has changed the game in both the scope of the attack surface and the scale of agentic attacks. This attack surface (and the control plane) spans assets, identity, and decision context. Enterprise AI agents and AI-generated code are both sources of risk.
In February 2026, OpenClaw, an agentic assistant, became so popular that its creator was recruited to join OpenAI. Although early adopters of OpenClaw may pose a shadow AI risk in enterprise environments, they also serve as a proof of concept for the agentic enterprise.
But the agentic enterprise is a security nightmare. Connecting AI to everything creates a flat network that runs counter to the principles of network segmentation and isolation that the security industry…
