Security leaders say monitoring agent behavior inside enterprise systems may be the next major challenge for CISOs.

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As AI agents proliferate inside enterprise environments with real permissions and real consequences, security leaders are shifting focus toward runtime security — continuously monitoring agent behavior while it operates, not just before deployment. Real-world incidents at Meta and Amazon illustrate the risks. Key challenges include building an agent inventory (many agents are deployed without IT approval), obtaining behavioral logs (not all agent platforms generate them), and extending EDR tools to track agent-specific activity. Experts recommend a 'shift left, shield right' approach: fix as many issues as possible at build time (where costs are ~100x lower), then use runtime monitoring as a last-mile safety net. Practical first steps for CISOs include inventorying agents, establishing behavioral baselines, applying agent-specific access policies, designing incident response procedures, and planning for AI-assisted monitoring to handle the volume.

Runtime: The new frontier of AI agent security