Tech Talks Daily
00:20:50 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:20:50] S0: And the other big question we've gotta bring in here is accountability. Of course, in the old days, human tech teams would all point to each other like the Spider Man memes, and it's not my network. It's it's your application. It's not my application. It's the the third party that manages it. So right now, though, how should accountability be divided between the vendor, the deploying organization, and the the people who approved its access when an autonomous agent could cause harm or something unexpected? Where where does accountability sit?
00:21:21 · Jonathan Trayers
[00:21:21] S1: If we just take AI outside this for a second. Right? Just think about where accountability and any kind of specific action is. You can outsource the task. You can't outsource accountability. You know, essentially, if you look at any of the directives across Europe, miss two, DORA, EU AI Act, as an example, the risk is at the management's desk. A regulator won't accept that an agent did it no more than they'll accept the intern did it. So they count the miller that he sits at the business. Right? So that's the first kind of threat. Right? Then you look at the agent itself. Right? The agent itself, you purchased an agent with clear documented guidelines. Right? So I don't know how the accountability would would be in in a in a in a... Answer that you are deploying it with your environment. You are responsible there. You have purchased a product to do something and you you own the accountability and responsibility. However, I do find when I was looking at the articles over the last couple of days, and I'm not sure if you saw anything around the new AI safety bill that they've... Yeah. And and Anthropic pitches to say that the bill should block a model if something like 50 people should be killed. I... Up to 50 people. And I I can't, like, comprehend that. Like, that is absolute madness. Right? The fact that we are saying that they would block a model if a large number of people. I think I think you killed was the the lines that I've read across the the news articles, but I think that comes back to accountability. Firstly, I I think the... In my opinion, the model owners are responsible for for one level of guardrails in place, and then the day to day use is the organization's management and board.
00:23:23 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:23:23] S0: Lovely. And finally, for anyone listening, let's give them a a few valuable takeaways here. If we have someone listening in a... Maybe an SME, they wanna move quickly enough to benefit from AgenTek AI without, leaning too much on governance or slowing things down or creating problems further on down the line. Any any advice, tips on on what they should be doing right from the outset?
00:23:45 · Jonathan Trayers
[00:23:45] S1: Yeah. Look. I think the first aspect is don't just turn it on and start using it. Start by bringing it up to a board level and management decisions to understand the scope of... And boundaries that the organization that you work for accept. Essentially, that would define the use case that will be brought in for and that has an associated risk appetite that has to be signed off from a board level. From that kind of element, would ask governance forward. You can set a light policy in terms of how it's used. And based on that, you can bring essentially a pattern for use within the environment to say that, you know, okay, once we have this use case, this is how we're going to use it, this is how we're going to implement it, and looking at this from a building blocks perspective, like, just like you would build an application, right, today. So if we were to build an application in in our environment, we'd have a web app, we'd pick one of the infrastructure components within our environment like Windows or Linux. We'd apply the hardened image that's approved by my organization, which is in line with the identity and access management policy. And every single building block that I've decide... Described there from that standard build perspective, you'd apply a similar pattern to AI. So define the pattern that can be reusable, and therefore, you're essentially putting guardrails in place for each stage of usage. And that allows you to protect your environment, to control and detect if something goes wrong, and then reuse them patterns over and over again. Right? I think that you have to start somewhere. So start by not looking at every single use case. Break it down to a single use case that you find the most value. And and from that there, you can essentially build upon it, which at least you have the the foundations in place.
00:25:43 · Neil C. Hughes, Jonathan Trayers
[00:25:43] S0: I think that is powerful moment to end on. And for anyone listening wanting to find out more about you guys, Ekco is one of the fastest growing security first MSPs in Europe. So I do urge people to check you out. But where should they go? Where can they find out more information, connect with you or your team, etcetera? [00:25:59] S1: Yeah. Look. Our website is ek.co. Reach out to us or you can reach out to me directly. I'm on LinkedIn under Jonathan Trayers. Always happy to connect with anyone. And I think from a takeaway perspective, look, AI is moving really fast. Right? But so how does every other technology advancement that has came before it? And I think it's by starting small, building a pattern, and utilizing kind of small building blocks to be able to introduce that technology into your organization. If you're on the other side of the house and you're worried about how your organization may be compromised from external agents, etcetera, I think just get really good at the basics. Vulnerability management, patch management, configuration management. There's nothing new here. It's hard work, but that's what's going to keep you safe.
00:25:59 · Jonathan Trayers, Neil C. Hughes
[00:25:59] S1: Yeah. Look. Our website is ek.co. Reach out to us or you can reach out to me directly. I'm on LinkedIn under Jonathan Trayers. Always happy to connect with anyone. And I think from a takeaway perspective, look, AI is moving really fast. Right? But so how does every other technology advancement that has came before it? And I think it's by starting small, building a pattern, and utilizing kind of small building blocks to be able to introduce that technology into your organization. If you're on the other side of the house and you're worried about how your organization may be compromised from external agents, etcetera, I think just get really good at the basics. Vulnerability management, patch management, configuration management. There's nothing new here. It's hard work, but that's what's going to keep you safe. [00:26:50] S0: Fantastic advice. I will add links to absolutely everything. I urge people listening to check you out and continue this conversation we started. And I would also love to hear from you. Techtalksnetwork.com. Give me a shout. Let me know your challenges, what the good, the bad, and the ugly out there with all things AI and AI agents. But more than anything, Johnny, just thank you for joining me today, bringing all this to life in a language everyone can understand. Really appreciate you, Tom. [00:27:16] S1: Thanks very much, Neil.