The era of experimentation in artificial intelligence is over, and it’s being replaced by the era of the agentic organization. Enterprises are moving beyond simple chatbots and pilots, toward agents that can interact with enterprise systems and code repositories, use tools, automate workflows and take actions on behalf of users.

Organizations are seeking greater productivity and are likely to find it. Yet the shift also creates a security problem that traditional application controls, and even most AI security tools, are not equipped to handle.

In the agentic era, AI will not simply respond to prompts. Agents will write code, access data, call application performance interfaces and even enlist other agents to help complete a task. “They're literally digital employees that don’t just follow instructions but also make judgement calls,” says Sohaib Shaikh, head of AI security go-to-market at Fortinet.

That autonomy introduces risks that can be difficult for organizations to anticipate. An agentic organization may be more efficient in some ways, but its humans may lack visibility into what its agents are doing behind the scenes. An agent might have legitimate permission to access a system but may use that permission in an unexpected or harmful way. Or it could encounter malicious instructions embedded in data it is processing, potentially causing it to disregard its original objective.

DISCOVER: Learn how Fortinet helps businesses respond to an ever-evolving cybersecurity...