Consumer Agentics Is Infiltrating the Enterprise, and CIOs Must Act Now

AI fatigue is endemic. You could be forgiven for dismissing agentic AI as just another model on the endless catwalk of shiny things. Only this time, the hype is justified. Autonomous agents are the fundamental cells that make up an entirely new kind of infrastructure: one that thinks, acts, and evolves — not just serving the business but participating in it.

But there are two forces conspiring against CIOs when it comes to agentic adoption.

First is the pressure to move.

The board wants it yesterday. Your CEO is side-eyeing competitors. And as CIO you’re in the frenzy firing line: responsible for selecting a vendor that will support the business’ growth, without exposing it to a whole new line up of threats.

Second is a divide in the market.

Companies are approaching agentics from opposing angles. On one side are tools such as n8n, which have impressive automations, but lack proper security and governance. On the other are platforms like Glean, with more robust security controls, but whose workflows aren’t truly autonomous.

With enterprise agentics, compromise isn’t an option. “Good enough” is bad. “OK” is unacceptable. CIOs need both enterprise-grade controls and enterprise-grade capabilities.

When Consumer Tools Invade the Enterprise

The combination of high pressure and limited choice is leading CIOs to rush adoption, and shoehorn consumer level tools into enterprise use cases – with disastrous consequences. These are the five most urgent risks of letting non-enterprise solutions loose in your business.

Fragile Data Security

You may not mind giving an agentic platform access to your personal apps to let it manage your weekly shop. But in the enterprise, those tools are connected to company systems and data. If your external AI vendor suffers a data breach due to poor cybersecurity, it’s your assets that are at risk, not your groceries.

Access Management Gaps

Each new agent you spin up has a distinct identity and must be treated as an autonomous individual. If you don’t apply strict least-privilege principles and continuous access validation, agents can become overprivileged, having free rein over sensitive information. The same layers of identity access management you apply to people must extend to your digital workers.

Lack of Observability

Every agent should be observable and understandable. Every decision and interaction must be traceable. Without complete transparency, there can be no trust. Trust enables autonomy and autonomy creates value. If you’re deploying distributed agents without observability, you’re fumbling around in the dark.

Shadow AI

Shadow IT was inconvenient. Shadow AI is dangerous. When the business is creating hundreds of new agents every week, you need procedures for identifying, indexing, and inventorying them. Because agents don’t just store data, they act on it. And if unindexed agents go rogue, what was once a nuisance becomes a liability.

Imitation Agentics

Don’t be fooled by generative AI in disguise. If your infrastructure is simply following instructions and processing data to bring you information, it is not truly autonomous. The value of agentics has cannibalized itself. Real agents have all the qualities of reliable employees: they are intelligent, independent, and goal-seeking.

How CIOs Can Identify a Mature Agentic Model

So how can CIOs identify mature enterprise-grade agentics? Here are five defining characteristics to look for, to ensure you’re choosing a provider that will accelerate business outcomes while also managing risks.

Infallible Governance

AI behavior must be auditable, explainable, and compliant. Agent decisions need to be continuously monitored and dynamically validated by zero-trust models so that when an agent acts, IT knows which agent, when, why, and under whose authority.

Optionality Across LLMs

Each LLM is a brain. Every enterprise use case requires a brain with different strengths. One model for computation, one for content curation, another for complex decision-making. True optionality lets you roam freely between licenses, enjoying the best of all brains.

Native Integrations

Even the most intelligent tool is useless if it isn’t available where work actually happens. To avoid losing your hard-won efficiency gains, you need to be able to access your agents both via web portal and directly through your enterprise tech tools. Without native integration, there can be no agility.

Advanced Observability

Traditional observability frameworks are shattered by the capabilities of autonomous agents. Mature platforms extend monitoring to include evaluations and governance, ensuring that agents operate safely and remain compliant. Only with comprehensive oversight, can there be true control.

Continuous Monitoring

Agents must be monitored in real time — both for performance and for accuracy. Policies should be dynamically enforced, boundaries contextually adjusted, and anomalies instantly flagged, with a response plan in place in case of regulatory violations or security breaches.

Your Agentic Foundation Determines Your Future

As enterprise buyers, CIOs need to be confident that their selected agentics platform is useful, versatile, and secure enough to provide a solid foundation for innovation.

Those who make good choices today will become architects of digital workforces in the future. Their companies will move at speeds competitors can’t match, scale at rates competitors can’t sustain, and deliver experiences competitors can’t imagine.

CIO Corner is the executive lens on what’s next in IT, delivered by Nasuni CIO, Dalan Winbush. With a firsthand perspective from the frontlines of IT leadership, Dalan unpacks what it really takes to modernize infrastructure, harness AI, and lead through complexity. This series tackles the hard questions CIOs face today, such as scalability, resilience, velocity, and value. It’s a candid look at how cloud and AI are reshaping enterprise IT — from someone who’s doing it, not just talking about it.