'We Will Be Outnumbered 46 To 1 By AI Agents,' Says Cybersecurity Leader

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) People in organisations are outnumbered 46 to 1 by artificial intelligence agents in the next six months, a cybersecurity leader said on Thursday.

“We cannot predict what's going to happen in six months, but one thing that we know for sure is that we are outnumbered by AI agents,” Mortada Ayad, the Vice President of Sales, META at Delinea, said, while calling it a“fact".

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He was speaking at the FutureSec conference, organised by Khaleej Times and now running for its third edition. The conference was attended by senior cybersecurity leaders in the UAE, including the government head for cybersecurity, Mohamed Al Kuwaiti.

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Controlling agents at the action, not access level, has been the biggest change in implementing artificial intelligence in the past six months, said the Delinea VP.

What will agents look like?

AI agents will be a mix of tailored personal assistants and fully autonomous agents capable of making their own decisions, said Shashi Punjabi, who was also speaking at the fireside chat along with Ayad.

“Of course, there will be human in the loop, but they will get to a stage where they will have multi-agents deployed,” he added.

Vijay Velayutham, Principal Information Security Officer at the UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, said in an earlier session that AI will undergo five stages: chatbot, copilot, agents (which is the stage it is currently in), multi-agent, and autonomous.

Punjabi explained that implementing AI is a different approach from digital transformation, in which he called the former a bottom-to-top approach, rather than a top-to-bottom approach like the latter.

“Digital transformation is more from top to bottom approach. So, CEOs are involved and then you plan from top to bottom, and it seeps down,” he said.“AI, on the other hand, is different because AI is a bottom to top approach. Users are already using it.”

How to safely implement agentic AI

Velayutham, the security officer at the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, explained in his presentation that organisations should treat AI agents like high-privileged users, with a clearly defined identity, access, authority and accountability.

He recommended the 'VET AI' framework, which focuses on validating the mission, establishing identity and authority, testing the system, and ensuring monitoring and containment are in place.

“For decades, cyber security has been good in protecting the environment in terms of securing the perimeter, hardening the endpoints, making sure network is monitored, and those are excellent controls and they continue to be good baseline controls.

“With the advent of agentic AI, it is forcing us to ask the question, what is more dangerous? Is it an attacker trying to break into the network, or is it a trusted internal user, also called as agent, with access to pretty much all the crown jewels and all systems, data,

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