Governing AI Agents as First-Class Identities

From Pearl Harbor to SolarWinds, the data was always there — what was missing was the governance layer to connect signals and act before damage propagated. Ravi Soin, CIO and CISO at Smartsheet, joins Alan Shimel on Techstrong TV to explain why that same lesson now defines the AI era and how security leaders can keep pace with machine-speed change. Drawing on more than 20 years across Microsoft, Edifecs, and now Smartsheet, Ravi argues that the fundamentals — secure SDLC, vulnerability management, patching, identity protection — have not changed; what has changed is the velocity. CVEs are now exploited in hours, sometimes minutes, and the only way for CISOs to keep up is a governance layer built for AI scale. Ravi walks through why every AI agent needs a first-class identity with a name, owner, and entitlements, why correlation across logs and model outputs has to happen automatically, and how Smartsheet’s intelligent work management platform brings tasks, data, and AI together with transparency and compliance for 85% of the Fortune 500.