When AI security agents adopt personas

Author

Taylor Hawes
November 10, 2025

🔎 Cyber Watch 🔎

State of cybersecurity for MSPs/MSSPs in the U.S.

According to this report from Security Boulevard, MSPs and MSSPs in the U.S. face a mounting challenge in 2025. 

  • Many providers now manage 8–15 separate security tools, which creates a heavy operational burden. 

  • The failure rate for security initiatives is high—about 73 % don’t reach their intended outcomes, primarily due to fractured tooling and skills shortages. 

  • Ransomware continues to expand: in 2024, there were 5,414 global incidents (an 11 % increase year-on-year).

Key takeaway

For service providers and internal security teams, the take-away is that maintaining separate tools for detection, response, compliance and monitoring is proving unsustainable. Moving toward a unified architecture that can ingest, correlate and automate across environments offers improved productivity and cost savings. The skills gap and regulatory burden remain real obstacles: firms must invest in training, adjust processes and negotiate vendor licensing more rigorously.

🎙️ Tech Briefing On‑Air 🎙️

Beware the boo-gus giveaway

In this episode of the Hacking Humans podcast by CyberWire, the hosts cover evolving phishing and social-engineering techniques. 

Key Points:

  • One case discussed: a fake “AI recruiter” lures developers via a realistic technical assessment on GitHub, then launches a multi-stage malware chain to steal credentials and wallets. 

  • Another scam: a Halloween-themed phishing campaign using a bogus giveaway from a familiar retailer, where obfuscated code and tracking pixels were used to harvest payment and personal information. 

  • The episode also touches on how the attacker exploited the psychological urge to respond quickly—fear, urgency and familiarity play major roles.

Takeaways: Even organizations with mature security postures may struggle with social engineering because it leverages human behaviour rather than purely technical vulnerabilities. The message: strengthen awareness training, test phishing resilience regularly, create defined playbooks for when humans err—and include scenarios that mimic real-world deception (not just the “click the link” generic test).

🤝 Partner Intel 🤝

WhatsUp Gold

This review highlights how WhatsUp Gold is suited for monitoring networks, servers, cloud assets and distributed sites. 

Key features:

  • Automated discovery of network devices using SNMP; device inventory created without manual entry. 

  • Network mapping: visualizes dependencies so alerts can show parent/child relationships and avoid duplicate warnings. 

  • Alerts, dashboards and reporting: sensors for server CPU, memory, storage; WiFi monitoring; cloud asset integration; custom dashboards per user. 

  • Distributed monitoring: If an organization has multiple sites, these can be unified under one console. 

Best for:

WhatsUp Gold is best for network administrators who require a unified view of on-premises and cloud assets, want to reduce manual device-inventory chores, and need flexible dashboards/reporting for varying stakeholders (e.g., IT operations, security, management).

🤖 AI Runtime 🤖

When AI security agents adopt personas

This article describes how AI-powered ‘agents’ are increasingly being given synthetic personas to make them more approachable to security staff.

For example,  the startup Cyn.Ai introduced “Ethan” as a synthetic security worker who handles brand protection, asset discovery, and vulnerability management. Another vendor, Twine Security, built “Alex,” an AI digital employee that deeply understands context, not only isolated tasks. 

But there are risks. As the article notes, organizations must treat these agents like any identity in the system—governed, auditable, with minimal permissions. The “least agency” principle is introduced: granting the agent only what’s required and not full autonomy.

📊 By the Numbers 📊

10.5 million

The Conduent data breach, impacting over 10.5 million people, was discovered in January 2025, three months after the intrusion, and is expected to spark more legal action.

🗳️ Your Monday Take 🗳️

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Until Wednesday’s edition - Let’s keep that zero-day count at zero!