Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Last week, I had the honor of emceeing the AI Agent Security Summit in San Francisco, a gathering of some of the brightest minds exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, security, and human responsibility. Having moderated a panel at the first Summit in New York City earlier this year, stepping into the emcee role this time around was a different experience, but just as enjoyable. On-demand recordings of the sessions will be available soon.

When the day wrapped up at the Commonwealth Club, one thing was clear: we are in a moment unlike anything the security community has faced before. Hundreds of practitioners and thought leaders from around the world came together, and the turnout alone showed just how urgent and relevant this topic has become. Michael Bargury opened his keynote with a question that lingered well past the event: Are we actually making progress in securing agents?

Let me be the first to say it, this space - AI agent security and governance - can be confusing. When I joined Zenity, I was new to “agents”; so new that I thought we were talking about endpoint agents (to be fair, my background is in XDR/SIEM). Laughs aside, if you’re still figuring it out, you’re in good company.

We’re thrilled to share that Zenity is included in the unveiling of the Microsoft Security Store Partner Ecosystem. The Security Store is a new marketplace offering from Microsoft that brings together trusted, curated security solutions and AI agents to help organizations navigate the evolving landscape of cybersecurity in the age of AI. The Microsoft Security Store is a strategic leap forward in how security teams discover, deploy, and operationalize technologies that protect their environments.

If there’s one lesson security teams should take from recent disclosures, it’s this: AI agent attack techniques don’t disappear - they resurface, across vendors and platforms, with only small variations. What researchers called out months ago is showing up again, now in Salesforce as the ForcedLeak vulnerability.

Zenity, the leader in securing AI agents everywhere, is officially partnering with Slalom, a global business and technology consulting firm, who made the announcement today. This collaboration is designed to help enterprises safely and confidently adopt AI agents by combining Zenity’s robust security and governance platform with Slalom’s deep expertise in digital transformation and AI implementation.

The regularly occurring NYC AI Safety Meetups cover a variety of topics, with this latest session focusing on the convergence of AI Safety and AI Security. I had the fantastic opportunity to contribute to the conversation, it’s one that’s been budding for some time, but this was my first direct exposure.

In the rapidly evolving field of AI, understanding the distinctions between how agentic workflows are initiated is crucial. While the verbiage among tech providers varies, it essentially comes down to whether an agent is prompted by a human from a chat interface or autonomously from external sources like emails, data changes, calendar invites, or otherwise.

Your security teams are facing an unprecedented challenge. AI agents are spreading across enterprises faster than anyone anticipated, from Microsoft 365 Copilot processing sensitive emails to custom agents built on AWS Bedrock accessing critical databases. Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies are already deploying these autonomous systems, oftentimes without adequate security guardrails. The result is a rapidly expanding attack surface that conventional security tools simply cannot see or secure.

AI agents are autonomous, powerful, and deeply embedded in how modern businesses operate. From rerouting customer support emails to accessing critical business tools like email and CRM systems, agents are transforming workflows across departments. As of Microsoft’s Q1 2025 earnings report, over 230,000 organizations, including 90% of the Fortune 500, are using Microsoft Copilot Studio to build custom agents for a huge variety of tasks.