Executive Brief
At this year’s Black Hat conference, security researchers demonstrated live how quickly an Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent can be manipulated into exposing data it was never supposed to touch. The attack took minutes to set up and worked against systems built by major cloud providers.
That pace is the real story. Attackers are adopting AI faster than most internal security teams can evaluate it, let alone defend against it, and the gap between what a small IT team can monitor and what a modern attacker can automate keeps widening.
- A live Black Hat lab showed a prompt injection attack compromising an AI agent in a matter of minutes
- Security researchers warned that data loss prevention tools built for known patterns are not built for AI-era threats, where 95% accuracy still leaves meaningful exposure at machine scale
- Evaluating and operating AI-enabled security tools requires dedicated expertise most internal IT teams do not have the bandwidth to build
- A managed security services provider (MSSP) brings that expertise, plus contentious monitoring, as a standing capability rather than a project
Dig deeper below.
What This Year’s Black Hat Sessions Revealed
Our earlier post on emerging AI risks for defense contractors covered how AI is reshaping phishing through voice cloning and prompt injection. This year’s Black Hat sessions showed something closely related: how far attackers have already progressed in using AI against enterprise systems.
Sessions included:
- Prompt injection live demo: Researchers used a hidden instruction inside an ordinary document to make an AI agent access data and invoke tools it was never authorized to use. No human typed the malicious command.
- Data loss prevention: Presenters noted that 95% accuracy sounds strong until an AI agent takes thousands of automated actions a day. The remaining 5% is where sensitive information can slip through unnoticed.
- AI-enabled fraud: Attackers can compromise a legitimate mailbox, study real invoices and conversations, and insert themselves into an existing transaction. That makes the fraud harder to catch by instinct alone.
Why This Outpaces a Typical Internal IT Team
None of this means a specific product failed. It means the threat landscape evolved faster than most internal security functions were built to track.
Keeping up with this pace requires:
- Continuous monitoring across identity, endpoint, email, and cloud activity, not periodic reviews
- Dedicated evaluation of AI tools and AI-connected integrations before they are trusted with sensitive data
- Governance over what an AI agent is allowed to access and do, with human approval built in for high-impact actions
- Staff who can evaluate a fast-moving vendor landscape and separate real capability from a polished demo
The goal isn’t to eliminate every risk. It’s to continuously identify, evaluate, prioritize, and reduce the risks that matter most to the business and mission.
For a contractor running a lean internal IT team, building and maintaining all of that alongside day-to-day operation is a significant lift. It is also the kind of work a managed security services provider is built to carry as a standing function.
What an MSSP Brings Threat Internal Teams Often Can’t
A managed security services provider operates as an extension of your team, with security as its core function rather than one responsibility among many.
- Continuous monitoring and response. Threats do not wait for business hours, and an MSSP’s detection and response capability doesn’t either
- Specialized threat intelligence. An MSSP tracks emerging techniques, including AI-driven attacks like prompt injection and voice cloning, as part of its daily work
- Governance frameworks already in place. Mature MSSPs bring tested approaches to AI tool evaluation, access control, and incident response, rather than building them from scratch under pressure
- Scalable expertise. Staffing a full security operations function internally is difficult even for larger organizations. An MSSP brings that bench without the hiring and retention burden
What to Look for in an MSSP
Not every provider is built for the defense industrial base. When evaluating a potential MSSP partner, ask:
- Does the provider understand Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), Federal Contract Information (FCI), and CMMC requirements specific to defense contractors?
- Can the provider demonstrate how it detects and responds to AI-driven threats, not just traditional malware?
- Does the provider offer centralized visibility across identity, endpoint, email, and cloud activity, or only pieces of it?
- Is security integrated with compliance support, or handled by separate vendors that don’t talk to each other?
Not sure if your organization handles either CUI or FCI? Our CUI quiz is a fast way to check.
See Where This Fits into Your Bigger Picture
AI-driven attacks are only one part of a larger security and compliance picture. Our Managed IT, Cybersecurity, and Compliance offering integrates all three into one coordinated program, so your team has a single, accountable partner keeping you secure and audit-ready at every step.
FAQs
Is outsourcing security to an MSSP only for companies that can’t afford an internal team?
No. Many contractors with internal IT staff still use an MSSP for the specialized monitoring, threat intelligence, and 24/7 coverage that is difficult to build in-house, regardless of company size.
Does working with an MSSP mean giving up control over our security decisions?
No. A well-structured MSSP relationship keeps your organization in control of key decisions and policy, while the MSSP handles execution, monitoring, and the specialized expertise behind it.
How does this connect to CMMC compliance?
Many of the controls an MSSP provides, including monitoring, access control, and incident response, map directly to CMMC requirements, making a strong MSSP relationship a practical step toward compliance rather than a separate initiative.
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