AI security concerns have surged from 17% in 2024 to 48% in 2026 according to The Linux Foundation’s 2026 State of Tech Talent Report — a critical shift given that while 97% of organizations are committed to implementing AI, 57% face a significant capacity gap in security and risk management. By combining data access, system execution and data movement into a single profile, autonomous agents have been dramatically expanding the enterprise attack surface. A patchwork of application-layer fixes and legacy monitoring tools is no longer enough. To safely scale enterprise AI, security must be built directly into the data and control planes.
At Black Hat 2026, Snowflake is delivering that foundation and announcing Cortex AI Gateway and major production-ready AI security advancements.
Agent interoperability layer: Extending Snowflake governance with Cortex AI Gateway
With the rapid rise of autonomous agents, teams are quickly leveraging standards like MCP to connect LLMs to databases, internal tools and SaaS environments. However, decentralized adoption creates unmanaged sprawl, fractured user experiences and severe security liabilities, leaving organizations vulnerable to unvetted servers, tool hijacking and data exfiltration. As enterprises scale autonomous agents across models, tools and platforms, they're running into a hard problem: fragmented access, no visibility into what agents are doing and AI costs spiraling out of control.
