Topic starter
16/04/2026 12:57 pm
TL;DR: Coding agents now expand the enterprise attack surface, and Palo Alto Networks says its acquisition of Koi extends visibility and risk remediation to agentic AI on the endpoint, where the real issue is that traditional security tools were built for stable users and workloads, not agents that act with critical-system access in-session.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Palo Alto Networks: “Palo Alto Networks Completes Acquisition of Koi to Secure the Agentic Endpoint”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when coding agents inherit a developer's full access?
A: The agent stops being a bounded helper and becomes a high-trust actor with permissions that outlive the task.
Q: When should organisations use runtime authorization for AI agents?
A: Use runtime authorization when agent behavior can change based on context, tools, or delegated workflows.
Q: How can teams tell whether agentic access controls are actually working?
A: Look for evidence that every privileged action is logged with actor type, target resource, and policy decision, and that denied requests are being blocked before execution.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory agentic endpoint tools by effective authority List every coding agent, desktop agent, and autonomous endpoint tool that can read code, write files, invoke shells, or call enterprise APIs, then map the actual authority each one exercises.
- Bind agent access to task scope and session context Replace broad inherited access with task-scoped rules that define which repositories, commands, data sets, and downstream services an agent may touch during a live session.
- Instrument agent activity at the control plane Log prompts, tool calls, file writes, API requests, and policy denials so security teams can interrupt or contain agent behaviour before it becomes persistent change.
Bottom line: Agentic endpoint tools expand the attack surface because they execute with authority during live sessions rather than as passive software components.
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services → | Read the full analysis →
This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
08/10/2026 6:39 pm
Agentic endpoint security is now an identity governance problem, not only an EDR problem. When a coding agent can read, write, and invoke enterprise resources during a live session, the security issue is no longer limited to endpoint compromise. The real question is who or what is authorised to act at runtime, and for how long. Practitioners should treat these tools as governed identities with bounded authority, not as ordinary software utilities.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Claude Code-assisted commits leaked secrets at a rate of 3.2%, more than double the human-only baseline of 1.5%, with peaks reaching 31 secrets per 1,000 commits in August 2025, according to the State of Secrets Sprawl 2026.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should IAM teams respond when human approval is part of agent execution?
A: Treat approval as a runtime control, not a post-denial exception. The policy should be able to hold, retry or resume actions based on a qualifying approval event before the agent completes the next step. That keeps human oversight inside the workflow rather than outside it.
👉 Read our full editorial: Palo Alto Networks' Koi acquisition shifts AI agent endpoint security