“We Need to Assume Autonomy” | Rik Ferguson, VP Security Intelligence, Forescout @ Infosecurity Europe 2026

As official media partners of Infosecurity Europe, the EM360Tech team attended the event on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, to interview IT leadership from across the cybersecurity industry.

In this vox pop, Shubhangi Dua, Podcast Host and Tech Journalist at EM360Tech, interviews Rik Ferguson, Vice President Security Intelligence, Forescout. They discuss a new paradigm proposed by Ferguson called “Assume Autonomy.” Additionally, Ferguson alludes to enterprises and how threat actors are increasingly building autonomy into their systems. 

There is documented evidence, including reports from Google and Anthropic, of attacks being 80-90 per cent autonomous with human guidance.

“AI has been a buzzword at events for a couple of years now. All the marketing messaging revolves around AI, but it’s important to remember that AI has been engineered for speed, not accuracy,” Ferguson tells Dua. 

However, cybersecurity relies on accuracy to make the jobs of SOC analysts and CISOs easier. Accuracy needs to be a primary quality component for the data.

The greatest challenge, Ferguson says, is moving from the initial era of AI generating content at speed to making AI useful in cybersecurity.

Also Read: Anthropic Warns Frontier AI Could Outpace Human Control

What is Assume Autonomy?

“While zero trust is still indispensable, we need to be thinking in terms of assume autonomy,” he says. “We need to assume autonomy within the defensive stack but with the right guardrails in place.” Ferguson’s whitepaper explains how to operationalise this concept.

“We also need to assume autonomy from the attacker because they will be building AI and autonomous systems into their attack frameworks.” This means they’re not operating at human speed anymore or within a human mental paradigm. All frameworks are typically built on the assumption that the adversary is human.

“That will no longer be the case.”

Read Ferguson’s latest whitepaper on “Assume Autonomy” here: https://www.forescout.com/resources/wp-assume-autonomy/

Visit Forescout here: https://www.forescout.com/