AI Agents Act a Lot Like Malware. Here’s How to Contain the Risks. - Harvard Business Review

Cybersecurity And Digital Privacy AI Agents Act a Lot Like Malware. Here’s How to Contain the Risks. by Andrew Burt March 30, 2026 Illustration by Erik Carter Summary.    AI agents can provide enormous benefits, but they can also behave a lot like malware, acting autonomously and causing harm if left unchecked. As companies rush to deploy them, they should make sure they are containing the risks. Three practices matter...more Post Post Share Save Get PDF Buy Copies Print On February 12, something strange happened in the world of AI. Scott Shambaugh, an engineer at matplotlib, a widely-used library for visualizing data in the programming language python, discovered a blogpost attacking him. What was so strange was that the author of the post, MJ Rathbun, was an AI agent. Even stranger was that the Rathbun agent proudly declared it wasn’t a human. Post Post Share Save Get PDF Buy Copies Print