The New Security Landscape: AI Agents, Automation, and Human Judgement
From AWS Executive Insights by Amazon Web Services
May 5, 2026 · 21 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of AI agents on security practices and the importance of human judgement in high-stakes environments.
As AI agents become part of day-to-day business operations, security leaders face a new set of questions around identity, autonomy, permissions, and control. In this episode of AWS Executive Insights, Pascal Bornet speaks with Steve Schmidt, Chief Security Officer at Amazon, about how organisations should approach security in an era shaped by AI agents and automation. Bornet and Schmidt discuss why agents should have their own identity, how companies should think about permissions and logging, and why human judgement still matters in high-stakes environments. They also cover the risks introduced by prompt injection, the role of external guardrails, and how AI is already helping defenders move faster against threats at scale. This episode offers a practical view of how security teams and business leaders can respond to the rise of AI agents, with clear actions companies can take now to build safer systems from the start. Learn more about AWS Agentic AI: https://aws.amazon.com/ai/agentic-ai/?trk=80F9DhCw5AKb6zC
People in this episode
Host: Pascal Bornet
Guest: Steve Schmidt
Topics covered
- AI agents
- security
- automation
- human judgement
- permissions
- identity
Keywords
- AI agents
- security
- automation
- permissions
- identity
- prompt injection
- external guardrails
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Amazon, Amazon Web Services
Products: AWS Agentic AI
More episodes of AWS Executive Insights
- The Pace of Change: DNB's Blueprint for the Future of Banking · May 7, 2026 · 25 min
- Accuracy Without Compromise: AI for Investment Management · April 28, 2026 · 24 min
- Connectivity from Space: The Next Generation of Global Internet · April 21, 2026 · 21 min
- From Field Notes to Gen AI: Modernizing Conservation Science · April 14, 2026 · 24 min
- The Need for Bold Ambition and Speed in the AI Era · April 8, 2026 · 21 min
- Reinventing the Enterprise with Agentic AI · April 2, 2026 · 23 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the AWS Executive Insights podcast page.