The Security Gap in Autonomous Intelligence
Feature published in International Security Journal, 5 June 2026, drawing on my perspective as Non-Executive Director and Strategic Advisor at Acumen Cyber. Summary below; the full piece is linked at the end.
Boards are under pressure to deploy AI and autonomous systems quickly. The feature examines what happens when decision-making is automated before the foundational controls are in place, and why removing the human from the loop turns ordinary weaknesses in identity management, data handling and access control into exponential ones.
The point is not to slow adoption. It is to sequence it: secure the infrastructure, then hand it autonomy.
Key points
The governance gap is critical: fewer than 30% of organisations have formal governance frameworks for AI systems, leaving a compliance vacuum as adoption accelerates.
Machine identities, poor data handling and inadequate access controls become far more dangerous when decisions execute automatically without human review.
Security has to be built in from deployment, with threat modelling and oversight mechanisms designed into AI systems rather than bolted on afterwards, a lesson every previous technology transition has taught the hard way.
Read the full feature in International Security Journal: The security gap in autonomous intelligence.
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