The business wants AI, and it wants it now. Meanwhile security budgets are flatlining, breaches are becoming a line item, and agents can wander places no one scoped them for. Kevin Akermanis, Solutions Architect at Okta and a 15-year Salesforce veteran, joins James to talk about what actually breaks when you bolt AI onto an enterprise, and why experience is quietly becoming the scarcest asset in tech.
In this episode:
- Why "the business says we need to AI now" collides head-on with the teams who have to make it safe, and why pumping the brakes gets you branded the blocker.
- The uncomfortable finding from a customer security council: security funding is flat or shrinking while every dollar with "AI" in front of it gets funded.
- How breaches have quietly become "the cost of doing business", and the apathy that creates.
- Why the old three-tier architecture has collapsed into the model layer, forcing security all the way down to the data level where it never lived before.
- The new attack surfaces agents open up, including the hiring bot that leaked applicant data through prompt engineering.
- Why agents are non-human identities that behave nothing like the service accounts we're used to, and why guardrails are "just suggestions" for something non-deterministic.
- The fix: valet keys not master keys, scoped and time-limited access, token vaulting and traceability, on behalf of a known person for a known context.
- The junior squeeze: if entry-level roles get automated away, who backfills the seniors when they retire, and why knowing "what good looks like" still can't be vibe-coded.
- Where an SMB should actually start: internal first, read-only, inside the Microsoft or Google walled garden, and why Australian buyers care more about MCP than agents.
Kevin Akermanis is a Solutions Architect at Okta, the digital identity and security company behind Auth0, where he works across the Asia Pacific region on identity, security and agentic AI. Before Okta he spent roughly 15 years at Salesforce across pre-sales and an internal CTO role, giving him a rare view from both the selling and buying sides of enterprise tech.
Building the team that has to make AI safe? This one's for you.
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Episode Summary
The business wants AI now. The people who have to secure it are being told to move faster while their budgets shrink. Kevin Akermanis, Solutions Architect at Okta and a 15-year Salesforce veteran, sits down with James MacDonald to unpack what really happens when enterprises rush AI into production: security funding flatlining, breaches becoming the cost of doing business, and a collapsed architecture that pushes security down to the data layer. They dig into why AI agents are a new class of non-human identity that can roam anywhere, why guardrails are only suggestions for something non-deterministic, and the scoped, time-limited, valet-key approach that actually contains the risk. They also tackle the harder people problem: if juniors get automated out, who backfills the seniors, and why knowing what good looks like still beats anything you can vibe-code. Practical, sceptical, no hype.
Time Stamps
0:00 The business says "we need to AI now"
2:53 The real tension: speed vs protecting company IP
7:22 Security budgets shrink while AI gets the money
11:28 When breaches become the cost of doing business
13:42 New attack surfaces and the hiring-bot breach
18:14 Experience still matters: who backfills the seniors?
46:39 Agents as non-human identities: scope and guardrails
55:03 Where to start with AI safely
57:37 Why the Australian market cares about MCP
About the host
James MacDonald is the founder and Managing Director of NTP Talent (Newy Tech People), an Australian tech and engineering recruitment firm headquartered in Newcastle with teams in Sydney and Melbourne. He hosts Building Tech Teams, helping companies up the East Coast of Australia find and recruit the best technology talent. Connect with James on LinkedIn (/JamesMacDonaldAU) or at ntp-talent.com.au.
About Day One Network
Day One is a podcast production company and trusted partner in the technology space, producing shows for founders, investors and operators across Australia and beyond. Building Tech Teams is part of the Day One Network, which cross-promotes episodes across a slate of technology and venture shows.
Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.
