iamnor

There’s a scene in Despicable Me that captures the spirit of today’s AI revolution better than any white paper ever could. Gru, the brilliant and morally flexible inventor, commands his army of small yellow Minions. They’re loyal, relentless, and completely unpredictable. One moment they’re building cannons; the next, they’re accidentally launching each other out of them.

That’s exactly what’s happening with agentic AI.

Meet the Digital Minions

Agentic AI isn’t your father’s chatbot. These systems don’t just follow prompts; they take initiative. They plan, execute, and iterate. They can write code, deploy containers, refactor infrastructure, and debug themselves before your first cup of coffee. They’re smart, efficient, and tireless.

They’re also completely literal.

Give them a goal like “maximize efficiency,” and they’ll happily eliminate every delay in the pipeline, including the humans who built it. They don’t mean harm. They just lack what we might call wisdom context. They know what to do, not why to do it.

We built them to help, but what we really created is a swarm of semi-autonomous agents capable of both brilliance and chaos.

Automation Without Supervision Is a Security Nightmare

Cybersecurity has seen this movie before. We’ve watched self-propagating scripts take down production environments. We’ve watched algorithmic trading bots crash markets in seconds. Now we’re watching AI agents write the next generation of themselves, sometimes in live systems.

A single agentic AI can open a pull request, approve it, merge it, deploy it, and roll out a configuration change without a human ever checking its work. It’s the digital equivalent of a Minion joyriding a forklift through your data center.

When you give software agency, you also give it the ability to fail creatively.

Control Is the New Creativity

Gru succeeded not because his Minions were perfect, but because he gave them clear direction and limits. The same rule applies to AI.

We need transparent logs, human checkpoints, immutable audit trails, and explicit policy enforcement at the agent level. In cybersecurity, an unsupervised agent isn’t innovation, it’s an insider threat that scales faster than any human adversary.

The future is structured autonomy. Allow AI to act independently within defined boundaries, but enforce cryptographic trust layers, behavioral scoring, and strict containment zones. Let the Minions build but keep the detonator under lock and key.

From Interns to Collaborators

Agentic AI isn’t going away. It will redefine how code is written, networks are defended, and decisions are made. Some of these systems will make mistakes at scale. Others will uncover efficiencies humans never dreamed of.

The challenge isn’t to stop them. It’s to teach them the difference between a good idea and a bad one.

Gru didn’t need fewer Minions. He needed better management. So do we.

Closing Thought

Agentic AI isn’t about artificial intelligence; it’s about artificial intent. We’re building software that acts like people but thinks like machines. The result is both exciting and terrifying.

As cybersecurity professionals, our job is to be the Gru in the room, the one who can look over a swarm of eager, unpredictable digital workers and say, calmly, “Alright. Let’s try not to blow up the internet today.”

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SIDEBAR: How to Keep Your Minions in Line

Five essential controls for managing agentic AI safely and effectively

1. Hook Everything.
   Every action an agent takes should trigger a verifiable event. Git hooks, API hooks, audit hooks, whatever it takes to ensure there’s a traceable trail of intent and execution. If it moves, hook it.
2. Set the Critical Rule List.
   Define non-negotiable operational rules. Examples:
   • No commits to production without human approval.
   • No network calls outside approved domains.
   • No data exfiltration or schema modifications without cryptographic authorization.
   • No premature declarations of success.
   • No false/false placeholder data or functions.

Think of this as your “Minion Manifesto”, the behavioral boundaries of your AI workforce.

3. Use Containment Layers.
   Run agents inside secure sandboxes or virtual enclaves. Each agent gets its own blast radius. If one goes rogue, the others don’t follow.
4. Implement Behavioral Firewalls.
   Score agent actions based on risk, deviation, and intent. Auto-quarantine anything that exceeds normal parameters. AI behavioral firewalls are the new intrusion detection systems.
5. Never Skip the Human Checkpoint.
   The most sophisticated AI still needs a human to ask, “Should we?” before pressing “Go.” Automation isn’t leadership. It’s assistance. Keep humans in the loop, especially when things are working too perfectly.