Key Takeaways for Partners from the Zenity AI Agent Security Summit

Having joined visionary leaders and top practitioners at ZenityLabs’ AI Agent Security Summit in San Francisco, I came away inspired and laser-focused on the incredible opportunities and responsibilities ahead for any organization looking to adopt and secure AI agents.

From Complexity to Clarity: Delivering Value through Secure AI Innovation

In my role in working with Zenity partners, I see firsthand the rush towards helping the world’s leading organizations embrace AI agents to drive productivity and heighten respective competitive advantages. But as highlighted throughout the Summit, delivering true business value requires a proactive, collaborative approach to securing and governing agents. The conversations underscored that progress isn’t just about innovation, it’s about instilling trust and reducing risk at every step.

Three Partner Pillars for Secure AI Success:

Back in April, Zenity launched our Partner Program, which is aimed at bringing together an ecosystem of organizations that accelerate customer value by enabling AI agents throughout every enterprise by providing security and governance for agents everywhere. In working together with a variety of Value-Added Resellers and System Integrators, I see a lot of trends starting to materialize where organizations are rushing towards adoption of AI, and needing to implement strong security foundations from the jump in order to fully roll out and capitalize on the upside of AI agents.

We’re working together with customers to implement not just software, but comprehensive programs to help our customers understand and manage the risks of AI agents. These themes were the underpinning of a lot of the sessions at the Summit:

• Define Boundaries to Empower Business: As partners and trusted advisors to the world’s leading organizations, our primary role is to help them maximize the utility of AI agents without losing control. With AI agents this can be particularly challenging, as they require access to data, to people and to actions in order to be valuable. That value, in turn, makes them risky. As security leaders, we must guide clients to establish clear, hard boundaries for what these agents can and cannot do. This “secure-by-design” mindset ensures any compromise is contained, protecting operations and brand reputation.
• Human Oversight Drives Accountability: Automated agents are powerful, but there needs to be a strategic plan for how they are rolled out; particularly with sweeping business initiatives, such as implementing agentic platforms for various line of business (LoB) users. Partners add value by ensuring clients maintain effective oversight and governance so that security and innovation teams can work together to roll out power AI agents across the organization. Embedding hard boundaries is essential for compliance, responsibility, and ultimately customer trust.
• Always-On Monitoring is a Must: Ongoing visibility into agent behavior, data access, and workflow automation is now a foundational requirement. Partners can differentiate by providing solutions that enable customers to see and manage AI activities in real time. This not only mitigates risk, it builds confidence and supports continuous improvement.
• Shared Responsibility is More Relevant than Ever: Leaders from Microsoft, Google, ServiceNow, and OpenAI shared the stage in an enlightening panel that emphasized the shared responsibility of securing agentic AI. Platforms provide secure foundations and governance frameworks, but enterprises must ensure responsible configuration and oversight within their environments for proper defense-in-depth. This collective understanding ensures innovation and security advance in lockstep.

What Sets Leading Partners Apart? Collaboration and Action.

The summit’s deep-dive sessions revealed that winning in this fast-evolving landscape requires a spirit of partnership—across vendors, practitioners, and clients alike. By combining practical red-team exercises, real-world testing, and transparent feedback loops, we can pinpoint vulnerabilities before they impact business and demonstrate proactive leadership to our clients.

Positioning Leading Enterprises for the Future

AI agent security is now on every C-suite agenda, and the most successful partners will be those who anticipate risks, translate complexity into actionable strategies, and work hand-in-hand with clients to turn security into a business accelerator. As Michael Bargury of Zenity reminded us: “Our greatest asset is the community we’re building together.”

For partners, the takeaway is clear: There’s never been a better time to lead with confidence, deliver results that matter, and build lasting trust with our customers. The journey has just begun, and we’re uniquely positioned to help our clients thrive in the era of secure, responsible AI adoption. If you missed the Summit, and want to learn from the sessions, they will be released on-demand shortly - join the on-demand early access list!