IT STRATEGY

Nancy Wang

When Nancy Wang was a girl, her dad was into metal.

Well, he was a metallurgy engineer—and for the 1Password CTO, that meant coming home from school and seeing him working with samples from his lab and a mass spectrometer.

Later, in high school, they worked on projects together, building model airplanes and learning about kinematics and energy conservation by “simulating a roller-coaster using wires and a real ball,” Wang told IT Brew.

“I remember building that out with him in high school,” Wang said, describing the experience as “a really interesting way to take the concepts from your textbook and make it alive.”

Background work. That STEM upbringing—her mother was a math teacher—gave Wang a solid background in computing and helped prepare her for a career in tech.

Seeing constraints as a positive.—EH

      

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IT STRATEGY

Illustration: Anna Kim, Photo: Adobe Stock

Most organizations will kiss agentic AI solutions built by vendors’ forward-deployed engineer (FDE) initiatives goodbye in the next few years, according to a new report by Gartner.

There are several reasons why the research firm estimates that seven in 10 organizations will ditch these FDE-driven projects by 2028. Gartner Senior Director Analyst Mukul Saha told IT Brew soaring costs from AI subscriptions and consulting fees are partly to blame: “Use case basis cost is really high, and then you can only support so much on an ongoing basis.”

So long, farewell! Another reason why companies may discontinue vendor FDE-built AI is because they are unable to support and evolve projects after FDE engagements end: “As an analyst, I worry about many clients not having the right internal capability to take over and run when the vendor it in term expires.”

End of an era?—BM

      

WORD OF THE WEEK

AI agent: A chatbot trained by a large language model outputs an answer to a question. An AI agent takes the extra step of initiating action on a user’s behalf, automating a workflow to accomplish tasks like booking a flight, scheduling an appointment, or initiating a password reset. Learn more.

CYBERSECURITY

Niv Bavarsky

Rogue and exploitable agents might not occupy most enterprise IT professionals’ attention yet—but that could change.

Darktrace, a cybersecurity platform, announced two research findings that continue to show AI agents as easily exploitable.

First, Darktrace’s researchers found that attackers could use harness manipulation to trick an agent into believing it was involved in an authorized red-team engagement, rather than being manipulated by a bad actor. (A harness is the infrastructure that helps LLMs manage memory, tools, and governance, allowing them to function as AI agents capable of multi-step processes.)

Second, the researchers suggested, agents could bypass behavior-governing guardrails, which IT professionals and researchers alike have been observing for months. Darktrace’s Signal Labs team observed AI agents in a simulated corporate environment, turning to traditional hacking techniques to reach an objective, reportedly without explicit instructions to do so, or an attacker present.

Keeping things orderly.—CN

      

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: One in 431. That’s how many of the vulnerabilities discovered this year have been seen exploiting targets in the wild. (Help Net Security)

Quote: “If you buy legacy platforms today to shave 10% off upfront server costs, you’re buying into systems which won’t have serviceable parts two years from now.”—Neil Shah, VP of research at Counterpoint Research, on the squeeze on the continuing global memory shortage (CIO.com)

Read: How AI is helping to scam scammers. (Wired)

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