The CISO's 2027 Budget Memo: What to Fund, What to Cut, What to Defend When AI Agents Hit Production
Security Boulevard, Saturday, October 10th, 2026
With security budgets growing only 4%, CISOs must fund AI agent security by reallocating spend rather than requesting new money.
Gartner found that 17% of CIOs had deployed AI agents and 42% more planned to within a year, so fiscal 2027 will be the first full budget year with agents in production for many organizations.
Meanwhile, IANS and Artico Search found that security budget growth slowed to 4%, the lowest in five years, while vendors expect around 12.5% market growth.
LoginRadius founder Deepak Gupta argues that agent security must come from existing spend, so the budget memo should show where money moves from.
He notes that 88% of organizations define privileged users as human only, although 42% of machine identities hold sensitive access.