Your organization deployed multi-factor authentication. Password attacks dropped to zero. Credential stuffing became irrelevant. You won the authentication war.

Then the attackers adapted.

Cybercriminals realized they don’t need to break down your front door when they can steal your house key after you’ve already unlocked it and walked inside. This approach bypasses MFA entirely because the authentication already happened—legitimately.

You’ll see it in your logs as successful sign-ins from legitimate user accounts. No failed password attempts. No MFA bypass alerts. Just normal-looking authentication events that aren’t normal at all.

When Hackers Get Through: Your Municipal Risk Management Reality

Your job isn’t fighting hackers. It’s protecting your community’s ability to function when hackers win.

Recent incidents across Canada prove a harsh reality: sophisticated attackers eventually breach even well-defended organizations. The City of Hamilton faced an $18.5 million ransom demand. BC’s government networks suffered “sophisticated cybersecurity incidents” from state-sponsored actors. These weren’t IT failures—they were organizational crises that tested every aspect of municipal leadership.

Introduction

Modern security frameworks recognize five interdependent components that form a complete digital ecosystem: Users who interact with systems, Devices that provide access points, Networks that connect components, Applications that perform functions, and Data that holds value.

What happens when a new species enters this carefully balanced ecosystem? AI Agents—with their ability to act autonomously, access sensitive resources, and make consequential decisions—create ripple effects throughout our existing security paradigms.

Unlike adding another device type or data classification, integrating AI Agents into our security thinking requires a fundamental reconsideration of how we define protection boundaries. These entities exist simultaneously across multiple domains, blurring the lines between user and application, between data processor and decision-maker.