FIRESIDE CHAT: AI gives rise to a semantic attack surface, forcing a new class of network defense

SAN FRANCISCO — Enterprises rushing to deploy AI in their operations are opening a security exposure most of their existing tools were never designed to address. That’s the hard message coming out of RSAC 2026 — and it’s one worth sitting with.

Related: RSAC 2026 recap—no easy AI fixes

Jamison Utter, A10 Networks field CISO, draws a distinction that the industry tends to blur. The problem isn’t that AI has made familiar attacks faster or more powerful — though it has done that too. The deeper issue is that AI deployment creates an entirely new kind of attack surface: one that is semantic and non-deterministic, responsive to language, images, and multimodal input in ways no firewall, WAF, or API security tool was built to govern. “Every other tool we have today — none of them solve the semantic problem,” Utter said, “because that’s not what they were designed to do.”

The good news, he argues, is that the infrastructure layer is largely understood. Cloud security, Kubernetes, API protection, DDoS — enterprises have those tools. The new frontier is what happens when language itself becomes the attack surface.

His practical advice to security leaders: find out what your AI is authorized to reach, what systems it can touch, and then restrict it accordingly. Govern it the way you would govern someone new joining the organization.

“Treat it as a new operator on your network,” Utter said. I pushed him on just how unusual an operator that is — someone with a 160 IQ, fluent in ten languages, able to code and write poetry. His response: “That’s right. And it’s a little nutty.”

For the full drill-down, give the accompanying podcast a listen.

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(Editor’s note: I used Claude and ChatGPT to assist with research compilation, source discovery, and early draft structuring. All interviews, analysis, fact-checking, and final writing are my own. I remain responsible for every claim and conclusion.)

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