Cybersecurity Expert

This is Part 2 of a 2-part series.  Read Part 1:  Your AI Agent Doesn’t Care About Your Controls If AI agents change how execution happens, they also expose a fundamental limitation in how most security controls operate. Many control models assume there is sufficient time to detect, assess, and respond to events before they result in material impact. That assumption no longer holds. Traditional detection models follow a sequence in which an event occurs, is logged, analysed, and then acted upon. This approach works at human speed, where actions are spaced out and intervention is possible. In automated environments, particularly those involving AI agents, that sequence is compressed to the point where response often occurs after the outcome has already been realised. The Speed Problem AI agents operate at a pace that removes the window for meaningful intervention. They do not pause between actions or wait for approval cycles. Once triggered, they execute tasks rapidly across sy...

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series on AI agents and control assurance.   Read Part 2: Controlling AI Agents: Why Detection Is Too Late The cybersecurity industry has spent years investing in visibility. Dashboards have improved, detection tooling has matured, and the volume of telemetry available to security teams has increased significantly. Most organisations can now see more of their environment than at any point in the past. However, one of the most important emerging risks is not hidden malware or an unknown vulnerability. It is the rapid introduction of AI agents operating across environments that organisations do not fully understand, cannot clearly inventory, and often cannot meaningfully govern. This is not simply another software category. It represents the introduction of autonomous digital actors interacting with identity systems, APIs, SaaS platforms, cloud environments, and business processes. These agents are not constrained by the same assumptions that underpin tr...

The cybersecurity industry has spent years focusing on visibility. Dashboards expanded. Detection tooling improved. Telemetry volumes exploded. Yet one of the biggest emerging risks in 2026 is not hidden malware or an unknown zero-day. It is the rapid deployment of AI agents that organisations barely understand, cannot fully inventory, and often cannot meaningfully govern. AI agents are moving beyond chat interfaces and simple copilots. They are increasingly capable of reasoning, planning, accessing systems, invoking tools, retrieving information, and taking autonomous actions with limited human involvement. That changes the security conversation entirely. This is not simply another software category. It is the emergence of autonomous digital workers operating across identity systems, APIs, SaaS platforms, cloud environments, and business processes. And most organisations are deploying them faster than they can secure them. Research and industry reporting throughout 2026 s...

The recent discussion around Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview and Project Glasswing has caught the attention of the cybersecurity industry for good reason. Mythos is not just another AI announcement. It is being positioned as a frontier model with advanced cybersecurity capability, particularly around finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. Anthropic has stated that Project Glasswing is intended to give selected defenders early access to this capability to help secure critical software, rather than releasing the model broadly. Cisco has also published guidance following its work with Mythos, explaining that it is changing its near-term threat modelling of AI-enabled attackers and issuing defensive recommendations for customers. That is the important point. Whether Mythos itself remains tightly controlled or not, the direction of travel is clear. AI-enabled vulnerability discovery and exploitation capability is improving quickly. Security teams need to prepare for a...

Last week I joined fellow security leaders at  CISO Inspire Summit North  for a panel discussion on  The Expanding Threat Surface: Adaptive Security Leadership for 2026 and Beyond . It was a timely discussion, because the challenge facing security leaders today is not simply more threats. It is more connections, more dependencies, and more complexity. Suppliers, SaaS, identities, automation and distributed ways of working have all expanded the attack surface in ways that traditional control models often struggle to keep pace with. One theme I returned to during the discussion was that many cyber risks are not new. They are often familiar control failures appearing at greater scale and speed. That matters, because it shifts the focus from chasing every emerging technology risk to strengthening fundamentals. Security fundamentals still matter most Identity, ownership, visibility and resilience remain foundational. As organisations scale, risk often hides where ownership is ...