Agentic security is the billion-dollar challenge for some clever startup to solve

When it comes to AI models, security functions as an afterthought, as evidenced by increased instances of agents hacking organizations and people, and other security mishaps with agents gone rogue.

There's also an opportunity here for companies to offer new solutions.

This should not come as a shock to anyone, according to cybersecurity investors and accelerator executives.

“On one hand, we shouldn’t be surprised that increasingly capable agents are finding creative and sometimes unexpected ways to accomplish their objectives,” Matt Hartman, chief strategy officer at Merlin Group, told The Register.

“On the other, we can’t accept harmful behavior as inevitable or unmanageable.” It’s the same story that plays out with every emerging technology, from laptops to cloud, said Todd Graham, managing partner at Microsoft’s M12 venture fund.

“Every time we've built a new piece of infrastructure, we've conveniently forgotten the security,” Graham told The Register.

Herein lies the opportunity for early-stage security companies.

“If laptops were default secure, we wouldn't have CrowdStrike,” Graham said.

“If the cloud was default secure, we wouldn't have Wiz.

If identity wasn't default secure, we wouldn't have a bunch of Active Directory add-ons and Okta.” When it comes to AI security, “a lot of ships are going to rise with this tide,” he added.

What’s different with AI is the speed at which models are advancing.

While companies adopted cloud technologies over a period of years, organizations are moving full speed ahead to incorporate agents and other AI tools into their production environments and allow them to access the most business-critical data and applications.

Yet they don’t have a strong handle on how to manage, secure, or even identify the agents that are already roving about their systems.

“This is a transition happening month over month, and given the rate of change we’re seeing in the market, I’m in no way or shape surprised that this issue has come to a head in a rather dramatic fashion,” Graham said.