I’m reporting from Davos, Switzerland. There, thousands of business leaders and politicians arrive at the World Economic Forum to shake hands, talk shopping and, in some cases, go skiing.
Some executives I spoke to this week had big concerns about AI, but they had nothing to do with the possibility of a bubble.
Raj Sharma, global managing partner for growth and innovation at EY, said not enough is being said about AI security, particularly the management of AI agents and their lifecycles.
“It can access your data. There’s no name, so there’s no identity or anything associated with it,” Sharma said.
Compare this to humans. All computer systems and data that humans touch are often tracked.
“We need to build industrial-grade security for AI agents in that particular area. To me, that’s still a gap that someone needs to address,” Sharma said. “Everyone is talking about a good game. But if you look behind the scenes, it hasn’t matured yet.”
“It keeps me up at night,” Sharma added.
he is not alone. Tim Walsh, CEO of KPMG US, said the biggest issue he regularly discusses with CEOs is related to cyber risk, particularly AI.
AI agents are the latest development in executives’ continued concerns about cybersecurity, which is proving to be a very challenging problem. Somewhat ironically, the only way to combat the threat is with AI.
In some cases, the risks become so great that a company’s AI plans may need to be rescheduled.
“It’s not that they’re not moving forward, but they’re taking a little bit more time to make sure their environment is secure, and maybe even leaving their data on-premises a little longer so they’re confident that data security is established,” Walsh told me.
Walsh said another “real concern” is the threat of quantum computing from a security perspective.
He acknowledged that the technology is still years away from being fully developed, but its power is incredible.
“Quantum destroys everything,” Walsh said. “So it’s all encrypted.”
This has led companies to consider re-encrypting their systems, which is not an easy task.
“We spend a lot of time helping companies think through, ‘What does that look like? How do we configure it? How long does it take?'” Walsh said.
