Don't trust AI agents, warns the CEO of cybersecurity powerhouse

Companies and the average person are putting too much trust in AI agents.

"Don't trust AI agents," Zscaler ( ZS ) founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry said on Yahoo Finance's Sozzi Unleashed . "Give them this much trust for certain applications and services. And that's it. The problem today is that we let agents loose on our corporate network. It's like getting inside your building. They go where they need to go. Then they start scouting what websites are out there. It's easy to scan those websites. What's more challenging is that frontier AI models can find security vulnerabilities in a website, in a firewall, in a VPN, or in load balancers. They break in, and they get in. That's the problem.

Zscaler is a $33.9 billion market cap cybersecurity giant working overtime to protect companies from rogue AI agents.

Tech departments inside companies don't yet appear to be getting Chaudhry's message, or those from others in the cybersecurity space.

About 80% of the organizations in a new Deloitte survey currently lack mature governance capabilities for agentic AI.

That includes: 1) clear boundaries for agents that define which decisions they can make independently versus which require human approval; 2) real-time monitoring systems that track agent behavior and flag anomalies; and 3) audit trails that capture the full chain of agent actions to help ensure accountability and enable continuous improvement.

If not properly monitored and centrally controlled, AI agents can make unplanned mistakes, reveal sensitive customer information, and invite a cyberattack.

Zscaler's Chaudhry says he plans to share a more detailed product roadmap to combat AI agent risk at an investor day on Tuesday, the company's first since 2021.

"Agents going rogue is the biggest risk today. A user get compromised and then the user infects everything else. Imagine an agent on your corporate network hacked or hijacked or it goes rogue. They're far more dangerous because they work at machine speed. They have no coffee break, no weekend, no sleep time, and the number keeps on going so they can get your confidential data out. They can bring systems down. Those are the type of risks that we have to deal with," Chaudhry said.

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show, the ' Power Players With Brian Sozzi' podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi , Instagram , and LinkedIn . Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.