AI-agent security may require purpose-built infrastructure, not conventional sandboxes

Ambiguity increases security risk during major shifts in computing, including moving sensitive workloads to mobile devices, the cloud and fully distributed systems. Cloud adoption also meant giving up a sense of direct control over where data and systems reside. Security is framed as risk reduction, not the creation of a perfect system.

The same uncertainty applies to AI agents: conventional sandboxes are meant to keep activity in or out, while agents need both inbound and outbound capabilities to be useful. Claims that sandboxing is ineffective may reflect the use of a rudimentary model. The proposed direction is an environment designed for AI, analogous to redesigning monolithic applications as microservices on immutable, ephemeral infrastructure rather than simply putting them in containers and running them on Kubernetes.