Guardrails Are Just Suggestions: Securing AI Agents with Okta's Kevin Akermanis
About this episode
Kevin Akermanis discusses the challenges of securing AI in enterprises with James MacDonald.
The business wants AI now. The people who have to secure it are being told to move faster while their budgets shrink. Kevin Akermanis, Solutions Architect at Okta and a 15-year Salesforce veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises rush AI into production: security funding flatlining, breaches becoming the cost of doing business, and a collapsed architecture that pushes security down to the data layer. They dig into why AI agents are a new class of non-human identity that can roam anywhere, why guardrails are only suggestions for something non-deterministic, and the scoped, time-limited, valet-key approach that actually contains the risk. They also tackle the harder people problem: if juniors get automated out, who backfills the seniors, and why knowing what good looks like still beats anything you can vibe-code. Practical, sceptical, no hype. Time Stamps 0:00 The business says "we need to AI now" 2:53 The real tension: speed vs protecting company IP 7:22 Security budgets shrink while AI gets the money 11:28 When breaches become the cost of doing business 13:42 New attack surfaces and the hiring-bot breach 18:14 Experience still matters…
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