Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance published a research note in May showing that when organizations provision sanctioned AI tools with real governance behind them, unauthorized shadow IT usage drops by 89%.

AI progress is advancing on two fronts at once. The first is obvious: frontier models are becoming more capable, more autonomous, and more deeply embedded into enterprise workflows. The second is less visible, but just as important: the agentic stack underneath those models is maturing into critical infrastructure. Frameworks, package registries, SDKs, orchestration layers, model hubs, tool connectors, memory systems, identity planes, and CI/CD pipelines are becoming the control plane for how AI actually operates in the enterprise. At Cloud Security Alliance, we are trying to keep those two realities in balance. We should be excited about model advancement, but we cannot treat the surrounding ecosystem as an afterthought. Recent attacks against AI developer tooling and open-source package ecosystems show that the security of agentic AI will depend as much on the integrity of the stack as on the safety of the model. That is why CSA and the CSAI Foundation are focused on securing the agentic control plane: building practical frameworks, assurance models, threat guidance, and ecosystem observability that help enterprises adopt AI with confidence. The future of AI security will not be solved only at the model layer. It will also be solved in the scaffolding around the model: identity, provenance, least privilege, runtime monitoring, supply chain integrity, and resilient open-source infrastructure. Model capability is accelerating. Now the agentic stack has to mature with it: https://lnkd.in/euCzAFpY

📌 Excited to be part of a Cloud Security Alliance panel. I'll be sure to post the full panel recording when its available because its full of up to the minute #AISecurity content The AI Agent Governance Gap: What CISOsNeed Now" Based on CSA CSAI Foundation Research Note, April 2026 One of many well written questions by Illena Armstrong for the panel was: If a CISO in this audience is starting from zero on AI agent governance (no inventory, no agent-specific controls, no monitoring) what is the single most important thing they should do in the next 30 days? This really got me thinking. So I'm going to answer this way when we record today. The single most important thing a CISO starting from zero should do in the next 30 days is systematically discover and map every AI agent in the enterprise (both sanctioned and Shadow AI) to create an initial inventory. You cannot govern what you cannot see. Agent sprawl is a significant, fast-growing risk, and without a reliable inventory, no downstream controls (monitoring, access management) are enforceable So what's a 30-Day Action Plan for Immediate Visibility ? 1️⃣ Launch Discovery: Implement automated discovery tools (like CASB or browser security) to find Shadow AI, and check invoices for AI-related SaaS services. 2️⃣ Centralize an Agent Registry: Create a central database that documents the owner, purpose, data access paths, and model type (e.g., GPT-4, Claude) for every agent. 3️⃣ Define "High-Risk" Areas: Immediately look for agents that have broad access to enterprise databases (e.g., Snowflake, Jira) or the ability to autonomously initiate external actions, such as sending emails or initiating financial transactions. 4️⃣ Publish Interim Policy: Draft a simple, high-level "safe prompting" guide that forbids inputting confidential or personal data into public AI, ensuring immediate risk mitigation while the inventory is built. This foundational visibility allows you to transition from "monitoring the threat" to "managing it" through identity-first access control and containment What are you thinking? cc: Timothy Youngblood, CISSP

📌 Did you miss the Cloud Security Alliance 's AI Bytes Webcast on Vibe Hacking? Click the link to watch the replay: 👇 https://lnkd.in/epsSgYxh The rise of "vibe hacking" and autonomous, AI-driven attacks in 2026 represents a critical, paradigm-shifting evolution in cybersecurity, moving from AI-assisted phishing to fully automated, end-to-end intrusion and extortion campaigns. This shift means hackers no longer need high technical expertise to execute complex, multi-stage attacks; instead, they use agentic AI to "vibe check" and run operations, focusing on the speed and "tone" of the attack rather than manual code writing During this power packed session we discussed ⭐ Key Trends in Autonomous Attacks ⭐ Why This Matters ⭐ The "Vibe" Shift - Defensive Strategies Enterprises Can Deploy Today Shout out to a great panel-- Chris Wysopal | Ed Gaile | Mark Lynd #AISecurity