Report claims AI is recommending risky security moves — so maybe you shouldn't hand over full control of your systems just yet
Human decisions are being made by AI
by https://www.techradar.com/author/christian-cawley · TechRadarNews By Christian Cawley Published 29 October 2026
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- Report says AI is being given too much authority and autonomy to handle business-critical security decisions
- 70% of organizations delegate decisions to AI that would have been made by a human 12 months ago
- A “control gap” exists between the authority given to AI and an organization’s ability to audit it
Delegating complicated decisions to AI is leading organizations to place relatively new technology in charge of user permissions, in control of sensitive data, and risk security issues, new research has claimed.
A study by Illumio looked into how organizations are handing decision recently performed by humans to AI, without apparently taking into account the potential for serious issues to arise.
It found the majority (70%) of organizations are delegating previously human-made decisions to AI, but only around half (49%) can see what action is taken by an AI agent an audit it.
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The nature of AI agents makes this a particularly risky strategy, and the research has found that an incredible 56% of organizations are willing to accept greater cyber risks than 12 months ago. Almost half of that group (47%) have admitted to permitting AI actions in production environments.
Allowing AI agents to have free run of enterprise data, applications, and infrastructure is leading to wholly avoidable situations. Illumio’s research found that a control gap between the rules that organizations believe AI agents are operating within and what the technology is actually capable of.
Some 76% of organizations have experienced one or more security issues thanks to AI in the past year, with 35% revealing that following AI recommendations would result in a security risk. Meanwhile, 26% reported AI agents or tools had connected to other systems without the necessary approval.
More worrying is the 24% of organizations reporting AI’s drive to access data it shouldn’t be able to see, and another 24% stating it has triggered (or produced) an unauthorized action.
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