EMA Research Blog: Navigating IT and Security Horizons

Analysis is getting easier. Getting the answers right isn’t.

Something has shifted in enterprise IT, and it’s not getting enough attention.

This year at RSAC, we spoke a lot about artificial intelligence, agentic AI, and the power of community. We spoke about sharing knowledge, moving industries forward through connection and human networking. Somewhere among all the shiny new AI objects and all the discussions on sharing the latest threat intelligence data and methods, we might have lost track of the core mission. We need to enable business to continue in a secure manner.

Late last night, Mr. William Chalmers from Lloyds Banking Group in the United Kingdom sent me quite an unusual email. With the subject “Mutual Investment,” I absolutely expected yet another boring investment scam email which would promptly go into the spam bin. However, upon opening this email I was pleasantly surprised to see that this scammer had not sent me an “investment opportunity” (read that as investment scam) but accidentally emailed me his source code. Oops. I won’t include the full code here, but I will include some interesting snippets.

If 2025 was the year the industry aggressively deployed agentic AI to automate everything from code deployment to customer service, 2026 is shaping up to be the year we pay the security debt for that speed. We have effectively built an "AI-native" enterprise ecosystem, but in doing so, we have introduced a new class of insider threat that doesn't sleep, doesn't take breaks, and crucially doesn't think like a human.

Welcome to the recap of the Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Cybersecurity Awesomeness (CSA) Podcast. Hosted by Chris Steffen, vice president of research, and Ken Buckler, research director at EMA, the CSA Podcast covers a wide range of cybersecurity topics, from cyber workforce talent shortages to cyber threat intelligence, to current events in technology and security. This short, laid-back podcast is for listeners of all skill levels and backgrounds.

If you’ve tried to track the blizzard of OpenAI partnership announcements lately, you might feel like you’re watching the most ambitious infrastructure strategy ever conceived, or a Three Stooges-style routine where everyone keeps paying the same $20 back and forth…except now it’s $20 billion.