NETWORK SECURITY
“ Shadow AI is kind of like shadow IT, but on steroids”
Nancy Wang Chief Technology Officer 1Password
Agarwal points out that his company works with mission-critical companies like DoorDash, Zscaler and highly regulated environments like Coinbase, which makes this essential. The goal is“ full auditability”, which Agarwal says is made difficult because of the scale of a company.
“ It’ s a very new kind of challenge to display, but it is what is needed to get to the next step, which is an agent being able to take action autonomously, not just recommend to the user, but explain why it took this action, but still have some accountability for why this was in compliance with the policy.”
Nancy recalls that before AI, it used to take anywhere from weeks to months to onboard a new product, which is now shortened to a matter of days or even hours. This again brings us to the visibility problem.
“ In the security world, you can’ t protect what you can’ t see,” Nancy points out. She stresses the centralised governance problems of shadow AI, such as being able to see not just what models are being used, but also what AI apps are being used for other trivial activities within the enterprise like transcribing Zoom calls. As Nancy puts it:“ Shadow AI is kind of like shadow IT, but on steroids.”
114 September 2026