Cybersecurity breakfast in the city

Are You Ready for the Risks of Agentic AI?

AI is changing cybersecurity on both the offensive and defensive fronts. In November 2025, Anthropic stopped a major AI-driven cyberattack where a state-sponsored AI agent targeted 30 organisations largely on its own. A few months later, defensive AI models like Anthropic's Claude Mythos were able to find thousands of new software vulnerabilities within weeks. This shows that AI-led attacks are no longer a future threat, they are already happening.

Attackers are moving faster, automating their reconnaissance and widening the attack surface, while IT and security leaders are under pressure to spot weaknesses early and prove resilience, all on limited time and budget.

To cut through the noise, we're teaming up with CovertSwarm to host a practical breakfast briefing that shows you both halves of the picture: how attackers actually get in, and how to shut the door behind them.

It's a rare chance to hear from the people who break in for a living and the people who build the systems to thwart them, over coffee.

📅 Tuesday 8th Sep

⏰ 09:00–11:00 AM

📍 Fortinet, Moorgate, London

Reserve your seat, spaces are limited!

The Gap is Wider than You Think

Most organisations believe their security spend has them covered, right up until someone tests it. Agentic AI has lowered the bar: reconnaissance that used to take an attacker days now takes minutes, and every new tool, login and exposed service hands them more ground to work with.

AI models are already being used for malicious purposes. Attackers have used AI to carry out espionage campaigns by breaking tasks into smaller steps, such as mapping networks and exploiting weaknesses. State-backed groups have used Google's Gemini to research targets, and criminal groups have run entire extortion campaigns with AI. The UK's AI Security Institute even found that one model could successfully take over a simulated corporate network.

This session moves past the headlines and the hype. We'll show you what a determined attacker really does, where hands-on testing keeps finding the same gaps, and the practical steps that close them, so you get more from the technology you already own, or build a stronger case for what you don't.

Two Sides of the Same Break-In

This is the rare session that puts the attacker and the defender side by side.

The Attacker's View

CovertSwarm spend their days getting into organisations like yours, and not through the obvious phishing email everyone’s been trained to spot. Think multi-step social engineering: phone calls, follow-up emails, physical access, the kind of attack chains that land roughly four times out of ten. They’ll walk through what actually works, where the human gaps sit, and what it looks like when someone’s already inside.
The Defender's View

Once you know where the human weaknesses are, Formation Tech will show you how to harden the network behind them: stopping lateral movement, tightening your infrastructure posture, and running assessments aligned to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). We'll cover how to improve your overall security posture through effective identity management and the application of Zero Trust principles. The aim is simple: get the most out of the tools you’ve already bought, and give you the evidence to justify the ones you need next.

SPEAKERS

Hear Directly From the Experts

Will Morrish

CRO, CovertSwarm

Duncan Bates

Enterprise Architect, UK&I Solutions Strategy Group, Fortinet

Richard Morrison-Butcher

Director of the London Cyber Resilience Centre and Detective Chief Inspector, City of London Police

Mike Gilroy-Scott

Head of Technology, Formation Tech

Join us

Are you Prepared for the Next Wave of AI-Driven Attacks?

The attacks above made headlines because they were firsts. They won't be the last, and the tooling behind them is getting cheaper and more available by the month.

Spaces are limited for this community event, so don't miss out! Join us on Tuesday 8th September at 9 AM at Fortinet HQ, Moorgate, and take the next step towards building a stronger, more connected, more secure organisation.