AI Raises the Stakes for Zero Trust
Security Boulevard, Wednesday, October 14th, 2026
Zero Trust creator John Kindervag argues AI changes attack speed, not security fundamentals: every packet still rides a network.
The author talks with John Kindervag, who coined Zero Trust and now works at Illumio, and who isn't losing sleep over AI because AI can't get above or below TCP/IP: attacks still need network connections and permissions that defenders can monitor and control.
He says much of what AI finds was always there, just undiscovered, and notes that security has stayed at 10% to 13% of IT budgets since 2008 despite the hype.
'All bad things happen inside of an allow rule,' he says, so default deny and least privilege still apply, with AI agents starting at minimal permissions and earning more.
Human expertise, he adds, remains essential.