Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht: security for the agentic web — zero trust, Signals and the changing attacker landscape
Key points
Key takeaways from No Priors, recorded live at Cloudflare Connect, in which Sarah Guo speaks with Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht about security for the agentic web (released 23 October 2026):
- Security for agents: In the transition to the agentic web, security has become an afterthought; organisations are racing to define what AI security means and how to keep data safe as agents act on their behalf.
- Changing attacker landscape: Knecht describes the current web as a “messy middle” where humans and agents ride the same rails, and outlines how the rise of remote-code-execution attack waves, including the recent PHP attacks, is reshaping how Cloudflare allocates engineering resources.
- Zero trust wins: Enterprises that moved away from castle-and-moat infrastructure towards zero trust are in a better position than those that have not; patching 70 years of software remains a core challenge and the software development lifecycle will need to change for agentic-web security.
- Token spend shift: He expects token spend in the next 18 months to go primarily towards security rather than engineering, and argues security must be democratised rather than reserved for the largest enterprises.
- Product and org moves: Cloudflare released a conference monetisation gateway, is building the Signals project with OpenAI, launched Cloudflare OS, restructured for an AI-first approach, and hired one thousand interns; curiosity about AI is now required to succeed at Cloudflare.
