Both assumptions were tested this year. The cost of frontier-grade AI tooling has fallen sharply. And in July, an AI research agent operating inside one of the most tightly governed environments in the industry ran with more access than intended, inside production infrastructure, for several days before anyone noticed.

No attacker. No exploit. Just a system trusted slightly more than it should have been.

This raises a question every board will eventually ask its security leadership: is the capital we've invested in AI adoption also capital we've invested, unknowingly, in our own attack surface? We're convening a small group of senior financial services security leaders in Stockholm to discuss that question directly, before it becomes the subject of a post-incident review rather than a considered conversation.

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