All news articles
Lorikeet News Desk
Apr 10, 2025
TL;DR
AI startup CEO Jun Seki discusses the potential security risks and challenges AI systems can pose, while also showing strong potential for improving security practices.
It's funny how in the 21st century a large part of security engineering or IT security roles is just manually clicking buttons, typing usernames, creating passwords, assigning groups.
Jun Seki
Co-Founder and CEO | Stealth Startup
With AI encroaching on so many aspects of our lives, it's natural to be nervous about the implications. Our jobs face potential automation, governments are struggling with regulatory frameworks and our security and privacy depend on AI being properly guard-railed. What's being done to ensure we can protect ourselves in the midst of this uncertainty?
Jun Seki is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Antler and CEO of a forthcoming stealth AI startup. He sat down with us for a discussion about the challenges of establishing true safety within AI systems, and the emerging strategies being developed to eliminate threats.
Fear of the unknown: At the heart of AI security concerns is a level of mystery surrounding its development. "AI is a black box. It's pre-trained. So how do you evaluate the model, the safety and the response?" asks Seki. "There are so many models being launched, how do you know which models are poisoned, which are not? Let's assume the majority of them are poisoned. How do you know which ones are safe?"
Zero trust is not enough: The cybersecurity industry has long advocated for zero trust policies, but even that approach may not protect against the risks posed by AI.
"Zero trust means you need to verify everything—every transaction, every action," Seki explains. "Looking at recent cases, despite having multiple parties approve transactions, organizations are still vulnerable. Attackers have initiated highly sophisticated social engineering or deepfake UI/UX scams that look like legitimate transactions."
Security professionals find themselves in a tough situation, and Seki suggests several important questions they need to ask if they are to ensure their organizations are safeguarded. "No matter how much zero trust you enforce, you still need additional security frameworks on top of it. How do you identify deepfake interfaces? How do you verify underlying transaction links? How do you examine the source code to ensure you're not approving something malicious? These are the challenges we face even with zero trust principles in place."
I see agentic AI as a way of automating security engineering. It’s one step closer to replacing the IT help desk and enhancing organizational-level security. In that way, one of the initial internal threats can be eliminated.
Jun Seki
Co-Founder and CEO | Stealth Startup
AI-powered defense systems: Despite these challenges, Seki believes in the potential in using AI itself as part of the solution, particularly in threat detection and incident response.
"If you spin up an AI bot to actively monitor and defend the system, it can definitely react faster when an incident happens," says Seki. "If a hacker is attacking a specific network port, AI can see that and shut down that port much faster than humans can."
The industry is moving toward AI-enhanced DevOps infrastructure, where AI assists in diagnosing and responding to threats. Seki mentions he's watching developments like Microsoft Defender to see how AI enhances security capabilities, though he notes that widespread working examples of such systems are still emerging.
Eliminating internal threats: One of the most promising applications for AI in security might be addressing human-enabled risks. Seki points out the surprisingly manual nature of current security practices in most organizations.
"It's funny how in the 21st century a large part of security engineering or IT security roles is just manually clicking buttons, typing usernames, creating passwords, assigning groups," Seki observes.
The solution may lie in agentic AI, he says. "I see agentic AI as a way of automating security engineering. It’s one step closer to replacing the IT help desk and enhancing organizational-level security. In that way, one of the initial internal threats can be eliminated."
