By Jessica Lyons
Publication Date: 2026-01-21 23:04:00
AI agents arrived in Davos this week and the question of how to protect them – and prevent agents from becoming the ultimate insider threat – was the focus of a panel discussion on cyber threats.
“We have enough trouble training people to effectively prevent cyberattacks. Now I have to do it for people and agents combined,” said Dave Treat, Pearson’s chief technology officer.
Pearson is a global education and training company, and Treat spoke as an audience member rather than a panelist during the question-and-answer portion of the panel. Like many companies, Pearson is introducing AI agents into its environments, Treat said.
This presents a whole new set of challenges for companies that don’t want to miss out on the efficiencies that AI agents can provide – but they also don’t want those agents to access data and systems that should be off-limits to them, or…



