Agentic AI
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Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
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Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development
Agentic AI Is More Than Just the Latest Cybersecurity Buzzword at RSAC Conference
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May 7, 2025
Autonomous AI isn’t replacing jobs, but it is reinventing them.
See Also: Live Webinar | Resilience in Crisis: Recovering Your Minimum Viable Company Fast
Last week at RSAC Conference 2025, the message came through loud and clear: Agentic AI is no longer just a concept. It’s being deployed today. AI-powered agents are streamlining workflows, helping with compliance and aiding in threat detection at scale. While much of the RSAC buzz focused on the potential performance gains and trust concerns related to AI agents, another story emerged – one that speaks directly to cybersecurity professionals and those entering the field:
Agentic AI isn’t here to take your job, but if you work in cybersecurity, you will be relying on AI agents to do a large part of your job.
As Salesforce Chief Trust Officer Brad Arkin put it during one of many RSAC interviews with ISMG on the topic, “AI agents are no longer a future promise; they are already reshaping incident response and compliance at scale.”
AI agents aren’t simple chatbots. They are systems that can plan, act and learn. They pursue goals, follow logic trees and adapt their behavior, often without step-by-step commands.
But before we embrace a brand new technology with open arms, we need a heavy dose of skepticism. After all, if we work in cybersecurity, that’s part of our job. For example, Elastic CISO Mandy Andress called for greater transparency and oversight when deploying agents in sensitive environments: “More needs to be done to trust AI agents to perform cybersecurity tasks,” she said.
Trust, explainability and governance were recurring themes across multiple sessions. Despite the risks, organizations are moving fast because the productivity and resilience gains are too significant to ignore. Also, there’s the fear that cybercriminals are also experimenting with agentic AI to scale up their attacks.
So, What Does This Mean for You?
If you’re a cybersecurity analyst, engineer or student, you might be wondering: Where does this leave me? Let’s reframe the question: Where can you go from here?
Here are some of the new, evolving roles already beginning to take shape:
AI-Augmented Cybersecurity Analyst: No more drowning in alerts or logs. You’ll orchestrate intelligent agents, validate their findings and shift your focus to judgment, strategy and escalation. Think less triage, more tactical leadership.
Security Agent Designer: These professionals don’t just prompt AI; they design workflows, define parameters and build trust boundaries for AI agents operating in live systems. This is where DevSecOps meets human-AI collaboration.
AI Threat Hunter/Adversarial Analyst: The attackers are getting smarter and so are their tools. This role focuses on understanding how AI agents can be manipulated or attacked and designing defense systems to secure them.
Autonomous SOC Architect: A brand-new breed of architect will be needed to design security operations centers powered by agentic AI. Imagine a war room staffed by human experts and digital agents working side by side.
Governance and AI Ethics Lead: Who’s responsible when an agent makes a security decision? How do we audit that choice? These questions will define the next generation of risk, compliance and privacy leaders.
Skills That Will Future-Proof Your Career
Whether you’re new to the field or a seasoned pro, here’s what you’ll want to learn now:
- Prompt engineering and goal-setting logic;
- Agent orchestration tools such as LangChain or LangGraph;
- AI risk and threat modeling;
- Secure deployment practices for agents;
- Auditing and explainability frameworks;
- Human-AI collaboration strategies.
As Suja Viswesan, vice president of security and runtime products at IBM, advised, “Security must be baked in – not bolted on.”
As agentic AI moves deeper into real-world systems, that mindset will apply not just to how we secure these tools, but how we prepare professionals to build, manage and monitor them.
Career Transformation, Not Career Elimination
People will always need to stay in the loop. As HackerOne CEO Kara Sprague reminded us: “Despite AI advances, human intuition remains essential in security.” Machines detect patterns. Humans understand motives. When ethical hackers and AI agents work together, the result is faster, more adaptive defense.
This isn’t about being replaced. It’s about evolving from a manual task-doer to an AI strategist, auditor and orchestrator. You’ll need to think differently but you don’t have to become a data scientist. What you will need is fluency in how agentic systems “think,” operate and fail.
What Will Your New Title Be?
Agentic AI continues to reshape both attack capabilities and defense strategies but the industry isn’t just adding tools. It’s creating entirely new roles. Whether you become a Security Agent Wrangler, an Autonomous SOC Designer or a Cyber-AI Ethics Lead, the future is wide open. So ask yourself: What will your title be in the age of agentic AI?
Related Note for CyberEd.io Readers
As the educational arm of ISMG, CyberEd.io is already aligning future curriculum and training programs with these shifts. Is your company adopting AI? Do you have all the in-house expertise you need? Would you benefit from a greater understanding of AI agents, how they operate and how to monitor them? CyberEd.io is preparing learners for the roles this technology is unlocking.
This evolution isn’t theoretical. It’s underway and we’re here to help professionals lead it.
