“In one week, I talked to three companies that had added agents to their company org chart. … They said, not only should people be using agents that we should be building agents, but we should empower people to have a team of agents. … And so they came up with the concept of managing agents like teams and then put them in the org chart.”
Cybersecurity Today · October 2026
Context
Asked about the explosion of identities created by AI agents, Ely says three firms, among them a large financial institution and a big insurer, gave agents places in their org charts. That forced them to rethink access rights, with a named human accountable for each agent team.
Transcript
…teams. And I see so much thoughtfulness go into safety, capability, usability in the space. And that's one of the reasons why we sit in that community is because there's just so much interesting stuff that's coming out that we think is going to be beneficial to not only us, but to everybody else.
One of the things that excites me in terms of what's happening in security, it's a challenge, but I think it's exciting, is you have a whole totally new explosion of identities with agents. Is that something people are talking about with you?
…say, are the companies that I didn't expect right away. In one week, I talked to three companies that had added agents to their company org chart. And this was the moment where I knew something was different and I had to learn a lot more. But three companies in one is a massive financial institution. Another is a multi-billion dollar kind of insurance company. And the third was a tech firm. And they said, not only should people be using agents that we should be building agents, but we should empower people to have a team of agents. If people say, I don't have time to do something and we can't hire fast enough, we'll build an agent. But what we need to know who to tie the outcome to. And so they came up with the concept of managing agents like teams and then put them in the org chart and you can always see who manages that agent team and all this. And those are the companies that have had to really rethink access rights and…
One of the other areas that I think we talked about, but I wanted to make sure I got your opinion on it, was I keep telling people there's been no better time to go back to basics because I think we get overwhelmed and we lose track of the basics, knowing what you're protecting, knowing where the…
Yeah. Yeah, it's, I feel silly sometimes. I'll be in a meeting and people want some really amazing advice from me. They think I have this like amazing unlock this, this new strategy that I'm going to tell them. And then I start right where you started. And I said, you know, the basics, get really…
Yeah, I read through all of the publications of these, what's happened to these AI agents, and I just kept going, oh, God, no, you were checking this. And I know that's hindsight. And I know, but that's how you learn. So you go through it. And I just went, basic step, basic step, basic step. Or the…
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