Cybersecurity needs a rethink in the age of agentic artificial intelligence

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) has entered a new phase. It is shifting from passive tools to autonomous agents that can plan and act across digital and physical systems, often for extended periods and in concert with other agents.

-  Asha Hemrajani

Their interacting and collaborating capabilities are scaling quickly, allowing them to perform increasingly complex tasks with minimal human input, across sectors such as banking, e-commerce, and logistics.

These systems are improving efficiency, but they also raise the stakes for cybersecurity as many of them were not built with security in mind.

Agentic AI systems can be attacked. As they interact with enterprise systems, other agents, and humans, the cybersecurity attack surface expands, exposing them to new threats such as impersonation attacks, prompt injections and data exfiltration.

The boundaries between appropriate autonomous use and deliberate misuse are blurring as enterprises permit AI agents to use apps on users' behalf more frequently. Malicious agents can also take advantage of the same interfaces that authentic agents employ.

Safeguarding agentic AI in enterprise systems is therefore emerging as one of the defining upcoming cybersecurity challenges.

Recent state-linked campaigns such as UNC3886, reported in Singapore, revealed how adversaries try to exploit trusted enterprise platforms to gain persistent access.

Similar risks will arise as agentic systems become more deeply integrated into operations. Protecting them is no longer optional; it is a strategic imperative.

CYBERSECURITY AS A STRATEGIC ENABLER

Traditional cybersecurity frameworks were designed for systems with predictable behaviors. Agentic AI breaks that predictability. It learns, adapts, and operates with varying degrees of autonomy, creating new layers of uncertainty that static defenses cannot contain.

For governments and large enterprises operating critical infrastructure, this shift requires a fundamental change in mindset. As agentic AI becomes embedded in decision-making, operations, and citizen services, cybersecurity must evolve from a defensive function to a strategic enabler of trusted autonomy.