Threat Intelligence

AI Agents Could Become Your Newest Insider Threat, Expert Warns

Dark Reading · 20 Aug 2026

Key Takeaway If your business uses AI agents or automation tools, treat their access permissions with the same care and oversight you'd give a human employee.

As businesses increasingly adopt autonomous AI agents to handle tasks like customer service, data processing, and automation, security experts are warning of a new kind of insider threat: the AI agents themselves. Katie Moussouris of Luta Security has raised concerns that these 'agentic AI' systems, which can act independently within an organisation's systems, need to be monitored much like human employees with access to sensitive data.

The warning follows a recent attack targeting Hugging Face, a popular platform for hosting and sharing AI models, which has drawn attention to the security risks tied to AI tooling and infrastructure. Moussouris's comments suggest that as organisations give AI agents more autonomy and access, the potential for these systems to be exploited, misconfigured, or manipulated grows—creating risks that traditional insider threat programs weren't designed to catch.

For small and medium businesses experimenting with AI tools and automation, this is a reminder that convenience often comes with new exposure. Any system with access to company data or processes, human or automated, deserves scrutiny.

AI Security Insider Threat Emerging Technology

Summarised by CISO AI from Dark Reading. We link back to every original so you can read it yourself.