AI Agents Outpace Enterprise Security Guardrails in Middle East and Africa, Exposing Governance Gaps
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) agents in the Middle East and Africa is outpacing existing enterprise security controls, creating significant governance gaps. Rob Standing, Regional Vice President for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa at Rubrik, emphasizes that as organizations increasingly integrate these non-human identities, the region faces challenges related to limited visibility and security oversight.
Accelerating AI Adoption Amid Governance Challenges
Organizations across the Middle East are embracing AI at an unprecedented rate, driven by robust national strategies and extensive digital transformation initiatives. A notable example is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which announced a framework in April 2026 to implement agentic AI across 50% of government sectors, services, and operations within two years. While this momentum presents substantial opportunities, it also highlights the urgent need for enhanced recovery readiness, comprehensive observability, and security controls to keep pace with AI deployment.
According to the latest Rubrik Zero Labs (RZL) report, a staggering 86% of IT and security leaders anticipate that AI agents will outstrip security guardrails within the next year. Alarmingly, only 23% of these leaders report having complete oversight of the AI agents operating within their environments.
Rethinking Identity Governance in the Age of AI
As the proliferation of non-human identities continues, Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) in the region must reconsider their approach to identity governance. The rapid expansion of agentic systems complicates tracking and controlling these identities, which poses significant risks. Organizations are urged to adopt a cyber resilience framework that can effectively analyze AI-related risks across three distinct layers: the tool layer, the cognitive layer, and the identity layer.
Research from Rubrik reveals a stark disconnect between perceived control and operational reality. While 80% of leaders claim strong observability of their systems, 86% expect that the proliferation of agentic systems will outpace their security measures within the next year.
Addressing the Shadow Workforce
The emergence of a “shadow workforce” composed of autonomous agents operating with persistent access presents a pressing challenge for enterprises, particularly in regulated sectors such as government, finance, and energy. Many organizations currently lack visibility into the actions of these agents, including the systems they access and the ability to reconstruct actions post-attack.
To regain control, enterprises must strengthen governance within the Identity Layer, establishing clearer boundaries around agent permissions and access to critical environments. Enhanced telemetry and auditability are essential, ensuring that actions driven by agents are traceable and recoverable as these systems become more integrated into daily operations.
Reducing Operational Burdens Associated with AI
Despite the potential benefits of AI, over 80% of respondents in a recent survey indicated that AI agents require more manual oversight than they save. This operational burden stems largely from gaps in visibility and governance. To transition from this burden to a model where AI genuinely reduces complexity, organizations must implement stronger identity controls and define clearer operational boundaries for autonomous systems.
Resilience strategies must also evolve, offering dynamic oversight and phased recovery models that provide granular control over the autonomous workforce.
Building Resilience Against Agent-Driven Threats
Concerns about meeting recovery objectives are prevalent, with nearly nine-in-ten leaders expressing fears that they cannot adequately respond to the accelerating threats posed by agent-driven systems. Research from Rubrik indicates that 88% of leaders are worried about meeting recovery time objectives as these threats increase, and 33% believe that recovery from agentic attacks will lag behind traditional incidents.
Rubrik’s approach focuses on enhancing visibility and traceability, enabling organizations to better understand the actions of agents, contain incidents, and support more controlled recovery processes.
Emerging Attack Vectors in the Age of AI
As adversaries begin to leverage agentic systems, new attack vectors are emerging across three critical layers: the identity layer, the tool layer, and the cognitive layer. Risks include token theft and impersonation in the identity layer, unsafe execution and sandbox escapes in the tool layer, and prompt injection and logic manipulation in the cognitive layer.
To mitigate these threats, organizations must adopt a defense-in-depth strategy that integrates identity governance, rigorous tool security, and isolated environments.
Prioritizing Governance for Safe AI Adoption
The integration of AI strategy into organizational resilience frameworks is now essential. Boards in the Middle East must adopt a layered governance model that treats AI strategy as a core component of cyber resilience. This includes implementing the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (RMF) for risk discipline and ISO/IEC 42001 to convert governance intentions into verifiable actions.
Organizations should also align with the NCA Essential cybersecurity Controls (ECC 2:2024) in Saudi Arabia and the federal Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) alongside Digital Dubai’s AI Ethics Guidelines in the UAE. Verification processes must involve testing every use case against potential failure modes, such as excessive agency, before human sign-off. Additionally, maintaining a live inventory of all agents and identities is crucial for visibility.
If boards cannot demonstrate how to contain or stop an autonomous agent, they are not deploying AI at scale but rather risking it at scale.
Source: securitymea.com
Keep reading for the latest cybersecurity developments, threat intelligence and breaking updates from across the Middle East.
