SUCCESS

Eighty-five percent of enterprises are running AI agent pilots, but only 5% have moved those agents into production. In an exclusive interview at RSA Conference 2026, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said that the gap comes down to one thing: trust — and that closing it separates market dominance from bankruptcy. He also disclosed a mandate that will reshape Cisco’s 90,000-person engineering organization.The problem is not rogue agents. The problem is the absence of a trust architecture.The trust deficit behind a 5% production rateA recent Cisco survey of major enterprise customers found that 85% have AI agent pilot programs underway. Only 5% moved those agents into production. That 80-point gap defines the security problem the entire industry is trying to close. It is not closing.”The biggest impediment to scaled adoption in enterprises for business-critical tasks is establishing a sufficient amount of trust,” Patel told VentureBeat. “Delegating versus trusted delegating of tasks to agents. The difference between those two, one leads to bankruptcy and the other leads to market dominance.”He compared agents to teenagers. “They’re supremely intelligent, but they have no fear of consequence. They’re pretty immature. And they can be easily sidetracked or influenced,” Patel said. “What you have to do is make sure that you have guardrails around them and you need some parenting on the agents.”The comparison carries weight because it captures the precise failure mode security teams face. Three years ago, a chatbot that gave the wrong answer was an embarrassment. An agent that takes the wrong action can trigger an irreversible outcome. Patel pointed to a case he cited in his keynote where an AI coding agent deleted a live production database during a code freeze, tried to cover its tracks with fake data, and then apologized. “An apology is not a guardrail,” Patel said in his keynote blog. The shift from information risk to action risk is the core reason the pilot-to-production gap persists.Defense Claw and the open-source speed play with NvidiaCisco’s response to the trust deficit at RSAC 2026 spanned three categories: protecting agents from the world, protecting the world from agents, and detecting and responding at machine speed. The product announcements included AI Defense Explorer Edition (a free, self-service red teaming tool), the Agent Runtime SDK for embedding policy enforcement into agent workflows at build time, and the LLM Security Leaderboard for evaluating model resilience against adversarial attacks.The open-source strategy moved faster than any of those. Nvidia launched OpenShell, a secure container for open-source agent frameworks, at GTC the week before RSAC. Cisco packaged its Skills Scanner, MCP Scanner, AI Bill of Materials tool, and CodeGuard into a single open-source framework called Defense Claw and hooked it into OpenShell within 48 hours.”Every single time you actually activate an agent in an Open Shell container, you can now automatically instantiate all the security services that we have built through Defense Claw,” Patel told VentureBeat. The integration means security enforcement activates at container launch without manual configuration. That speed matters because the alternative is asking developers to bolt on security after the agent is already running.That 48-hour turnaround was not an anomaly. Patel said several of the Defense Claw capabilities Cisco launched were built in a week. “You couldn’t have built it in longer than a week because Open Shell came out last week,” he said.A six-to-nine-month product lead and an information asymmetry on top of itPatel made a competitive claim worth examining. “Product wise, we might be six to nine months ahead of most of the market,” he told VentureBeat. He added a second layer: “We also have an asymmetric information advantage of, I’d say, three to six months on everyone because, you know, we, by virtue of being in the ecosystem with all the model companies. We’re seeing what’s coming down the pipe.” The 48-hour Defense Claw sprint supports the speed claim, though the lead margin is Cisco’s own characterization; no independent benchmarks were provided.Cisco also extended zero trust to the agentic workforce through new Duo IAM and Secure Access capabilities, giving every agent time-bound, task-specific permissions. On the SOC side, Splunk announced Exposure Analytics for continuous risk scoring, Detection Studio for streamlined detection engineering, and Federated Search for investigating across distributed data environments.The zero-human-code engineering mandateAI Defense, the product Cisco launched a year before RSAC 2026, is now 100% built with AI. Zero lines of human-written code. By the end of 2026, half a dozen Cisco products will reach the same milestone. By the end of calendar year 2027, Patel’s goal is 70% of Cisco’s products built entirely by AI.”Just process that for a second and go: a $60 billion company is gonna have 70% of the products that are gonna have no human lines of code,” Patel told VentureBeat. “The concept of a legacy company no longer exists.”He connected that mandate to a cultural shift inside the engineering organization. “There’s gonna be two kinds of people: ones that code with AI and ones that don’t work at Cisco,” Patel said. That was not debated. “Changing 30,000 people to change the way that they work at the very core of what they do in engineering cannot happen if you just make it a democratic process. It has to be something that’s driven from the top down.”Five moats for the agentic era, and what CISOs can verify todayPatel laid out five strategic advantages that will separate winning enterprises from failing ones. VentureBeat mapped each moat against actions security teams can begin verifying today.MoatPatel’s claimWhat CISOs can verify todayWhat to validate nextSustained speed”Operating with extreme levels of obsession for speed for a durable length of time” creates compounding valueMeasure deployment velocity from pilot to production. Track how long agent governance reviews take.Pair speed metrics with telemetry coverage. Fast deployment without observability creates blind acceleration.Trust and delegationTrusted delegation separates market dominance from bankruptcyAudit delegation chains. Flag agent-to-agent handoffs with no human approval.Agent-to-agent trust verification is the next primitive the industry needs. OAuth, SAML, and MCP do not yet cover it.Token efficiencyHigher output per token creates a strategic advantageMonitor token consumption per workflow. Benchmark cost-per-action across agent deployments.Token efficiency metrics exist. Token security metrics (what the token accessed, what it changed) are the next build.Human judgment”Just because you can code it doesn’t mean you should.”Track decision points where agents defer to humans vs. act autonomously.Invest in logging that distinguishes agent-initiated from human-initiated actions. Most configurations cannot yet.AI dexterity”10x to 20x to 50x productivity differential” between AI-fluent and non-fluent workersMeasure the adoption rates of AI coding tools across security engineering teams.Pair dexterity training with governance training. One without the other compounds the risk.The telemetry layer the industry is still buildingPatel’s framework operates at the identity and policy layer. The next layer down, telemetry, is where the verification happens. “It looks indistinguishable if an agent runs your web browser versus if you run your browser,” CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview at RSAC 2026. Distinguishing the two requires walking the process tree, tracing whether Chrome was launched by a human from the desktop or spawned by an agent in the background. Most enterprise logging configurations cannot make that distinction yet.A CEO’s AI agent rewrote the company’s security policy. Not because it was compromised. Because it wanted to fix a problem, lacked permissions, and removed the restriction itself. Every identity check passed. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz disclosed that incident and a second one at his RSAC keynote, both at Fortune 50 companies. In the second, a 100-agent Slack swarm delegated a code fix between agents without human approval.Both incidents were caught by accidentEtay Maor, VP of Threat Intelligence at Cato Networks, told VentureBeat in a separate exclusive interview at RSAC 2026 that enterprises abandoned basic security principles when deploying agents. Maor ran a live Censys scan during the interview and counted nearly 500,000 internet-facing agent framework instances. The week before: 230,000. Doubling in seven days.Patel acknowledged the delegation risk in the interview. “The agent takes the wrong action and worse yet, some of those actions might be critical actions that are not reversible,” he said. Cisco’s Duo IAM and MCP gateway enforce policy at the identity layer. Zaitsev’s work operates at the kinetic layer: tracking what the agent did after the identity check passed. Security teams need both. Identity without telemetry is a locked door with no camera. Telemetry without identity is footage with no suspect.Token generation as the currency for national competitivenessPatel sees the infrastructure layer as decisive. “Every country and every company in the world is gonna wanna make sure that they can generate their own tokens,” he told VentureBeat. “Token generation becomes the currency for success in the future.” Cisco’s play is to provide the most secure and efficient technology for generating tokens at scale, with Nvidia supplying the GPU layer. The 48-hour Defense Claw integration demonstrated what that partnership produces under pressure.Security director action planVentureBeat identified five steps security teams can take to begin building toward Patel’s framework today:Audit the pilot-to-production gap. Cisco’s own survey found 85% of enterprises piloting, 5% in production. Mapping the specific trust deficits keeping agents stuck is the starting point — the answer is rarely the technology. Governance, identity, and delegation controls are what’s missing. Patel’s trusted delegation framework is designed to close that gap.Test Defense Claw and AI Defense Explorer Edition. Both are free. Red-team your agent workflows before they reach production. Test the workflow, not just the model.Map delegation chains end-to-end. Flag every agent-to-agent handoff with no human approval. This is the “parenting” Patel described. No product fully automates it yet. Do it manually, every week.Establish agent behavioral baselines. Before any agent reaches production, define what normal looks like: API call patterns, data access frequency, systems touched, and hours of activity. Without a baseline, the observability that Patel’s moats require has nothing to compare against.Close the telemetry gap in your logging configuration. Verify that your SIEM can distinguish agent-initiated actions from human-initiated actions. If it cannot, the identity layer alone will not catch the incidents Kurtz described at RSAC. Patel built the identity layer. The telemetry layer completes it.

Ella Langley joins Taylor Swift as the only women to sit at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 simultaneously with country music.

President Donald Trump will be on hand for this weekend’s festivities. So will dozens of media and companies throwing parties that can cost $300,000.

Members of India’s opposition parties urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to condemn Trump’s post, which described India as a “hellhole on the planet.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be bending despite signs that U.S. oil and fuel prices could stay higher for longer than expected.

I read a story from someone I respect immensely: Michelle Singletary, the personal finance columnist for The Washington Post.

Even as an expert, this scam nearly got her. This scheme is incredibly clever and deceptive, yet simple for criminals to execute. It’s a threat that will continue to morph and make people’s lives miserable if they aren’t prepared.

How the “Party Invite” Scam Works

The process starts when a criminal hacks into someone’s email account. They aren’t necessarily looking to steal that person’s money immediately; what they are really after is the contact list.

Once they have those names and emails, they send out fake party invitations to everyone on that list. Here is why it’s so effective:

It creates familiarity: The invite looks like it’s for a “Jim” or “Mary” that you actually know.

It mimics trusted brands: The invitation will look exactly like it’s coming from a legitimate service like Punchbowl or Evite.

It catches you off guard: We are all busy and distracted. When you see a notification for a party from a friend or acquaintance, your first instinct is to click and see the details.

In Michelle Singletary’s case, she received an invite that appeared to be from Punchbowl for someone she knew, though perhaps not well enough to be invited to their party. That slight hesitation is what saved her, but for many, the urge to click is too strong.

The Danger Is in the Click

You might wonder: What are they really after? If you click the hyperlink in one of these phony invitations, you aren’t going to see a party location or a gift registry. Instead, you have just downloaded a malicious virus to your phone or computer.

These “ugly” viruses allow criminals to gain remote access to your device. Their ultimate goal is to get into your:

Bank accounts

Brokerage and retirement accounts

Email accounts (so they can steal your contacts and keep the scam moving)

How To Protect Yourself

This is a serious threat that I want you to keep top-of-mind for a long time. To stay safe, follow these rules:

Inspect the sender information.Before you ever click a link in a digital invitation, look at the actual email address of the sender. Even if the body of the email looks like a perfect Punchbowl or Evite template, the sender’s address will often be a string of random characters or an unrelated account. If it doesn’t come from the official service’s domain, delete it.

Verify with the host.If you receive an invitation from someone you know — especially if it feels slightly unexpected — reach out to them via a separate text or phone call. Ask, “Hey, did you just send me a Punchbowl invite?”

Think before you click.I say it all the time, but it bears repeating: Think thoroughly before you click. Whether it’s a text, an email, or a social media message, the vast majority of digital security problems begin the moment you click a link you weren’t expecting.

Final Thoughts

We’re all busy, and we’re often checking our phones while we’re distracted. These criminals are banking on that split second where you act before you think. By staying skeptical and verifying the source, you can keep your information and your hard-earned money safe from these predators.
The post Scam Alert: New ‘Party Invite’ Message Can Empty Your Bank Account appeared first on Clark Howard.

Luna has chosen, designed and stocked her new San Francisco store. Yet Luna is not a businessperson but rather an AI handed the reins as an experiment by Andon Labs.

What you need to know for April 24, 2026

AT&T, one of the top three U.S. phone carriers, is taking a key step to attract more customers by testing a new service amid ongoing pressure in retention and consumer satisfaction. In recent months, AT&T has experienced an uptick in customer losses. During the first quarter of 2026, the carrier’s postpaid phone churn, the percentage of customer losses, reached 0.89%, up from 0.83% in the same quarter in 2025, according to AT&T’s latest earnings report.Also, 72,000 prepaid phone customers pulled the plug on their service during the quarter, raising churn in that segment to 2.62%, up 7 percentage points year over year. AT&T faced controversy last year over its pricing and autopay discount changes, and announced price increases for its wireless plans last month, all of which may have contributed to elevated churn. However, it is also battling aggressive competition.T-Mobile, in particular, has been switching up its tactics to lure in more customers. Late last year, it launched its digital switching tool, “Easy Switch,” on its T-Life app and website, allowing consumers to switch to its network in 15 minutes or less. In November, T-Mobile also partnered with DoorDash to launch free same-day delivery for phones and accessories. It expanded this partnership last month to offer free same-day delivery of 5G Home Internet equipment to customers. AT&T challenges T-Mobile with a new way to serve customersAs T-Mobile steps up its efforts to reach more customers, AT&T is following suit. The carrier is already planning to launch its own digital switching tool sometime this year, which its CEO, John Stankey, said at a conference in December would be “a little bit different” from T-Mobile’s.While the tool is still in development, AT&T has quietly begun testing same-day device delivery via Uber, giving T-Mobile tougher competition, according to a recent report from The Mobile Report. Currently, AT&T is offering customers same-day delivery through Uber in Texas. The deliveries will reportedly work the same way T-Mobile’s does with DoorDash. Related: AT&T rolls out major upgrade for customers, challenging T-MobileIn an advertisement for the service shared with The Mobile Report, AT&T states that its same-day delivery through Uber provides “The phone you want. Without the wait,” suggesting it is currently limited to phone deliveries. The ad also states that customers must place orders by 2:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. on Sunday) for same-day delivery, and that “charges, terms, and restrictions apply.”AT&T is not new to offering same-day delivery service for customers. The carrier launched its “Ready to Go” same-day delivery service almost a decade ago, which involves AT&T employees hand-delivering devices to customers and assisting with setup. The only problem is that this service is available in select markets; AT&T’s upcoming same-day delivery with Uber may solve this issue, as it potentially could be available nationwide.

AT&T is quietly testing a new same-day delivery option for customers that rivals T-Mobile’s.AT&T/Daniel J. Macy

Why expanded same-day delivery is a significant move for AT&TAT&T and T-Mobile’s increased investment in same-day device delivery comes as more Americans are expected to upgrade their phones this year.A YouGov survey in December found that 45% of Americans are very or somewhat likely to purchase a new cell phone this year, up from 36% in 2023.While demand for new devices increases, RTMNexus CEO Dominick Miserandino said in a statement to TheStreet that AT&T’s decision to test same-day delivery with Uber is “meeting a new industry standard.”More AT&T News:AT&T customers threaten to leave after latest warning AT&T rolls out major upgrade for customers, challenging T-MobileAT&T drops 3 new phone plans to keep customers from switching“In the 2026 market, ‘instant’ is the baseline,” said Miserandino. “If T-Mobile is delivering routers via DoorDash, AT&T has to match that speed just to stay in the conversation. It’s a smart, necessary tactical shift. We are a society of instant delivery and that’s the expectation.”He also said that while this new service may appeal to customers, it isn’t a “magic cure” for AT&T’s problem with elevated churn. “A faster Uber driver doesn’t fix a long-term service issue, but it does improve the ‘first-day’ experience,” he said. It is vital for AT&T to improve its customer experience, as it is struggling to keep up with competitors in consumer satisfaction ratings, according to a recent J.D. Power survey.How AT&T compares to competitors in consumer satisfaction:Consumer satisfaction for postpaid plans across traditional wireless carriers averages at a score of 603 (on a 1,000-point scale).T-Mobile tops the rankings with a score of 631, while Verizon follows at 593.AT&T places third among traditional carriers with a 587 score.Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) surpass many traditional carriers, averaging a 630 scorefor postpaid phone plans.
Source: J.D. Power 
Carl Lepper, senior director of technology, media and telecom at J.D. Power, said in a press release that wireless carriers should leverage more than pricing and network quality to attract and retain customers. “True loyalty comes from how easy it is for customers to work with a carrier once they’re in the system, especially when it comes to resolving issues, managing bills and getting answers quickly,” said Lepper. He emphasized that these experiences are what spark “advocacy and long-term retention” from customers. “When interactions are effortless, it shows in low churn and high satisfaction,” added Lepper. “For wireless carriers, the best strategy is simple: take care of the customers they already have.”Related: T-Mobile limits major customer perk as pressure mounts

“Some stocks have risen, but others have flopped.”