Understanding AI Agents and New Security Threats

This week's security news shows that artificial intelligence agents – computer programs that can think and act independently – have become a major concern for protecting data and stopping cyber attacks. Unlike regular AI that needs human instructions for each task, AI agents can make their own decisions and take action without asking permission first. This is both powerful and dangerous. While companies want to use AI agents to help their businesses run better, security experts worry these tools are creating new ways for bad actors to steal information and damage computer systems.

How AI-Powered Attacks Work Today

One of the biggest changes in 2025 is that attackers are now using AI as a core part of their attacks, not just as an experiment. In the past, hackers would attack one company at a time, slowly, step by step. Now, AI allows them to attack many companies at the same time, and the attacks change and adapt in minutes based on what the target company's defenses do. Imagine a teacher trying to stop a student from copying homework – but the student is using AI to write new homework every time the teacher spots the old version. That's how modern AI attacks work.

These AI-powered attacks can now learn and adjust in real-time, meaning if a company's defense system blocks one attack method, the AI automatically tries a different way. This is incredibly hard for human security teams to fight because analyzing millions of warning signals by hand takes too long – but AI can do it instantly. Speed is the new problem: where defenders once had hours or days to respond, they now face attacks that change every few minutes.

The Shadow AI Problem

Another serious issue discovered this week is something called Shadow AI – this means employees or hackers are secretly using AI tools inside company computer systems without permission. Unlike the well-known problem of Shadow IT (secret use of regular software), Shadow AI grows faster and quieter, creating huge data privacy risks that companies often don't even know about. For example, a worker might use an outside AI chatbot for a task without realizing it's sending the company's secret customer information to an outside computer.

Companies are finding that old security tools can't see AI-driven activity happening in their systems because these tools were designed to catch different types of problems. This means lots of companies have AI programs running in parts of their computer networks where security teams can't see them – and attackers know this too, making it easier for them to hide their own AI-powered attacks.

Data Privacy Risks from AI Chatbots and Prompt Injection

Another key risk is something called prompt injection attacks, where hackers disguise malicious instructions as normal customer questions to trick AI chatbots into doing harmful things. For example, a customer might ask a company's AI chatbot a question that secretly tells it to share sensitive customer data or take unauthorized actions. This creates what experts call a "lethal triangle" where the AI has access to customer information, can listen to untrusted questions from the internet, and can send information back out to attackers.

New Tools and Government Guidelines to Fight Back

The good news is that new AI-powered defense systems are being created to fight these threats. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released new guidelines this week to help companies safely adopt AI while protecting data, focusing on three main areas of concern. Companies are also using privacy code scanners that check computer programs for data leaks before they happen, rather than trying to fix problems after the damage is done.

What Companies Need to Do Now

Security experts say companies must shift from just finding problems after they happen to preventing them before code is even written. This means companies need continuous, automatic monitoring instead of waiting for alerts, because AI attacks happen too fast for slow human reactions. Organizations must also implement strong access controls, data governance, and extensive testing of AI systems before using them with real customers. The message is clear: in 2025, companies can no longer think about data security as something separate from AI – AI is now central to both attacking and defending.