Agentic AI Forces Rethink of Enterprise Security Architecture

The rise of autonomous AI agents is reshaping how enterprises think about trust and data protection. When software can independently access sensitive information and take action across business systems, the security challenge expands beyond controlling individual requests to governing workflows that span multiple applications and processes.

This broader scope transforms security from a software concern into an architectural and operational one, where decisions about access, oversight and recovery become interconnected. Krista Case, analyst at theCUBE Research, emphasized that enterprises must build resilience into their systems from the ground up. "With agentic AI, we have these new agentic-fueled attacks that are making all of the headlines," she said. "When it comes to cyber resilience and business resilience, the impact that this has had is that it's really become a part of the security conversation. [Resilience] really needs to be built in up front because there is a recognition that we cannot just build the fences high enough."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6XoldRi6ivU?feature=oembed

Enforcement Must Move Below the Application Layer

Agentic AI introduces new pathways to enterprise data that traditional application-level security cannot fully control. Juan Loaiza, executive vice president of Oracle Database Technologies at Oracle, explained that the solution lies in shifting enforcement into the database itself. "People are very clever about how they can phrase things in order to make AI do things that you would have basically thought you had prevented by prompting the AI," he told theCUBE. "If, at that data layer, we enforce that each end user can only see their data, then no matter what kind of prompt you put … the agent that's acting on behalf of that user can only see that user's data."

This architectural change means security protections must hold regardless of which application or agent requests access. Oracle combines database-level access controls with centralized security management through tools like Oracle Data Safe and Oracle Database Security Central. Vipin Samar, senior vice president of Database Security at Oracle, stressed the need for comprehensive visibility. "AI can move very easily and naturally from one database to the other," Samar said. "We have to have [a] full 360-degree view across [the] entire fleet, across your users, across your data. Only then can you really have effective security."

For organizations building agent-based applications, this approach separates the queries an agent generates from the data it is permitted to access. Accenture Enkitec Group deployed Oracle Deep Data Security to enforce authorization rules at the database level, enabling multiple agents to query a shared knowledge repository while maintaining distinct permission levels. Roger Cornejo, technology innovation principal director of gen AI/AI at Accenture Enkitec Group, reported that the system scales effectively. "We have dozens, probably 40 or more agents that are hitting this application," Cornejo told theCUBE. "We needed to make sure it would scale as well. Right now, we have tested it to scale to 300 simultaneous queries returning most of the results in 15 seconds or less."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZK6DAS56KE0?feature=oembed

Systems Modernization and Governance Are Essential

Deploying agentic AI securely requires enterprises to address technical debt and modernize their infrastructure. Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc., warned that postponing these upgrades leaves organizations vulnerable to AI-driven attacks. "This year, everybody's fighting about what is the better agentic framework," he said. "Next year is going to be the big renaissance of scaling the backend systems."

Readiness also demands visibility into where agents are being developed and which critical assets they can reach. Johnnie Konstantas, group vice president of Oracle Cloud Engineering at Oracle, highlighted the importance of identity management in this context. "Agentic AI brings to the fore this idea that an agent and several sub-agents functioning as a proxy of an individual can access data," she told theCUBE. "So, identity takes on a new form in that the agent is kind of carrying those permissions along to access and [can] maybe even take action on a certain workflow. Have good identity in place to the extent that you can have it be uniform and pervasive."

Technical controls alone are insufficient without organizational governance. Brennan Baybeck, senior vice president and chief information security officer of Oracle Customer Success at Oracle, identified governance, security fundamentals and clearly defined roles as persistent gaps in enterprise AI deployments. "Humans have never been more critical to help control these robots, as we call them," he told theCUBE. "We used to say humans are the weakest link. But now, what I'm saying is that robots are the most powerful and potentially dangerous link, and humans are now an essential link."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_B9G0AmVbwA?feature=oembed

Recovery and Continuous Learning Drive Resilience

Agentic AI security strategies must assume that both production systems and backup infrastructure could become targets. Ashish Ray, senior vice president of Oracle Database product management at Oracle, emphasized the importance of validating backup integrity. "Data that is backed up but cannot be validated is Schrödinger's data," he said. "The data could be backed up, and you cannot rest on the laurels because the moment when you start trying to restore, recover the data and use it, you may find out that the data cannot be used because maybe there was some underlying validation checks, underlying corruptions that happened."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8ReuvUa7O28?feature=oembed

Security programs must also adapt to the reality that attackers discover and exploit vulnerabilities faster than organizations can test, approve and deploy patches. Zulfikar Ramzan, former chief technology officer and chief digital officer of RSA Security USA LLC, advocated for learning from security incidents to strengthen defenses. "Continuously learn from every incident that occurs," he told theCUBE. "Look at those near misses where you got away with it, but maybe you shouldn't have. Take that input, take that insight [and] feed it back into your security program on a regular basis."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLDwC5BENSaFk