ISACA San Diego October Meeting

Who Authorized the Agent? Cybersecurity Lessons from Deploying Agentic AI in the Real World The security problem changes dramatically when AI stops recommending what someone should do and gains the tools and authority to do it. Agentic AI is moving artificial intelligence beyond chatbots and copilots into systems that can interpret events, use tools, coordinate workflows, retain memory, and take action. This creates enormous business potential, but it also introduces a fundamentally different attack surface. Drawing on his experience developing agentic AI for autonomous robotics and operational environments at NXT Robotics, Thomas Caldwell will examine what happens when AI agents gain access to cameras, telemetry, customer data, operational procedures, support systems, and real-world commands. He will explore emerging threats including prompt injection, poisoned knowledge and memory, excessive agency, compromised tools, agent impersonation, privilege escalation, and cascading failures across multi-agent systems. Thomas will also introduce the Octopus framework as a practical model for understanding the agentic enterprise: a governed intelligence layer coordinating specialized AI “tentacles” while maintaining security boundaries and human accountability. Attendees will leave with a practical approach for determining what an agent can know, what it can access, what it is authorized to do, how its actions can be audited, and when a human must remain in control. SPEAKER: Thomas Caldwell, CTO at NXT Robotics and Assistant Professor at National University Thomas is the author of the Octopus Series, a three-book framework for navigating Agentic AI at the enterprise, startup, and internal-incubator level. Cybersecurity runs throughout the series. Learn more at octopus-enterprise.com. He is an Assistant Professor in the Cybersecurity program at National University, currently teaching Operating System Forensics, and serves as fractional CTO for NXT Robotics, where he's building an Agentic AI safety system for land, sea, and air, deployed across outdoor venues for ACE Parking including Snapdragon Stadium, Petco Park, Pechanga Arena, San Diego Zoo, and Sutter Health Park in Sacramento. Visit Thomas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tcaldwell/