Interpol's top security official has a measured message about artificial intelligence and crime. It is not a revolution, he says, but an accelerant. That message lands alongside fresh industry survey data that makes a sharper point. Inside many enterprises, AI agents are multiplying faster than anyone is securing them.
Read together, these accounts suggest a split in where the risk sits. Criminals are using AI to sharpen familiar attacks from the outside. Companies, meanwhile, are installing a new class of semi-autonomous software on the inside, with access they are struggling to govern.
Interpol: faster, wider, harder to spot
Bjorn R. Watne, Interpol's global chief information security officer, spoke at Tech Week Singapore. He argued that AI is enhancing existing criminal techniques such as scams and fraud rather than reinventing them. 3 He said scam operators can now work many victims at once. Better machine translation and convincing digital identities are also blurring the line between fraudulent and genuine interactions. 3
His advice to companies was practical. They should identify their most critical assets and build defenses around the specific threats those assets face. 3 He also flagged agentic AI as a distinct concern, because these systems are being given broader access and the power to act on users' behalf. 3
That last point is the bridge to the survey data. An agent that can act for a user is, functionally, a new kind of insider. It holds credentials, permissions and the ability to move data or trigger transactions. Interpol named the risk but did not size it.
The numbers: rapid growth, thin coverage
Two industry reports try to fill that gap.
Gravitee's April 2026 survey covered 750 senior technology leaders in the UK and US. Respondents included CIOs, CTOs and platform heads across financial services, healthcare, telecoms, manufacturing and travel. 1 The survey found that enterprise AI agent estates roughly doubled in the four months since December 2025. 1 It also found that 48% of production AI agents are running unsecured. 1
The report's central finding is what it calls a widening "confidence-reality gap." Executives' confidence in their security has risen. Yet monitoring coverage, accountability structures and pre-deployment controls have barely changed. 1 Organizations, in other words, are growing more comfortable with a risk they have not actually reduced. The report says incidents are already happening at scale. It points to missing cohesion as the core problem: consistent identity models, centralized enforcement and clear ownership. 1
A separate 2026 Agentic AI Security Report, published via Security Boulevard, surveyed 300 enterprise leaders globally. They worked across security, fraud, identity and AI functions. 2 Its headline figure is stark. Ninety-seven percent expect a material AI-agent-driven security or fraud incident within 12 months, and 49% expect one within six. 2
Spending tells a different story. On average, organizations devote just 6% of their security budgets to AI-agent risk. One in ten does not track that risk separately at all, and more than half have no formal governance controls for agents. 2 More than 70% of security teams also lack confidence that their tools will scale as AI-driven attacks evolve. 2
Where the accounts agree, and where they don't
The two surveys reinforce each other despite different samples and geographies. Both describe organizations that understand the danger yet have not acted on it. One measures this in unsecured agents and stalled controls. 1 The other measures it in near-universal expectation of an incident set against single-digit budget allocation. 2
The tension with Interpol's framing is more about emphasis than substance. Watne's "evolution, not revolution" view fits the external threat picture: phishing, fraud and impersonation made cheaper and more scalable. 3 The survey data points to something more structural on the defensive side. Agents are not just a tool attackers use. They are an expanding attack surface that companies are building themselves.
Some caution is warranted. Both reports come from organizations with a commercial stake in AI agent security. Survey questions about expected incidents measure perception, not outcomes. A 97% expectation figure says as much about anxiety as about probability.
The reading
Even with those caveats, the direction is hard to dismiss. Agent deployments roughly doubled in a single quarter. Nearly half run without security coverage. Most organizations lack formal governance. Under those conditions, the "insider" that matters may not be a disgruntled employee. It may be an over-permissioned agent that nobody clearly owns.
Watne's advice to map critical assets and tailor defenses applies directly here. Security teams will need to treat agents as identities with their own permissions, monitoring and accountability. Right now, the data suggests most are not doing so. Until spending and controls catch up with deployment, the gap between confidence and readiness is likely to keep widening.
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