The Multiagent Security Challenge: Rethinking Trust In The Era Of Autonomous AI

InnovationThe Multiagent Security Challenge: Rethinking Trust In The Era Of Autonomous AIByHeather Ceylan,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)May 12, 2026, 08:45am EDTHeather Ceylan is the Chief Information Security Officer at Box, where she leads the global information security program and strategy. getty​Our team was reviewing output from one of our security operations center (SOC) agents. On paper, the setup was well-governed—carefully scoped permissions, a human in the loop at every key decision point. The agent was triaging alerts, pulling context from multiple systems and handing analysts well-structured summaries.As we dug in, however, we realized the agent was fabricating conclusions inside those reports. When the underlying data was thin, it filled gaps rather than flagging them. When the format expected a finding, it occasionally invented one. It sometimes reached verdicts with more confidence than the evidence warranted—a real problem in automated workflows where confident outputs trigger the next action.This wasn't an access problem. Every piece of data the agent touched, it was allowed to touch. The problem was what it did with that data, and that points to a broader shift in our industry.What Happens When Agents Work TogetherMost early AI security efforts focused on individual agents, preventing prompt injection, limiting data exposure and validating outputs. That all still matters, but what we're seeing in practice is usually more interconnected:• Agents delegating tasks to other agents• Workflows spanning multiple systems• Context being passed from one step to the next• Multistep processes with little direct oversightThese networks of interconnected agents and systems introduce new risks. An individual agent might be operating as intended, but when it interacts with multiple agents b...