Matthew Canham
Dr. Matthew Canham is the Executive Director of the Cognitive Security Institute and a former Supervisory Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he has a combined twenty-one years of experience in conducting research in cognitive security and human-technology integration. He currently holds an affiliated faculty appointment with George Mason University, where his research focuses on the cognitive factors in synthetic media social engineering and online influence campaigns. He was previously a research professor with the University of Central Florida, School of Modeling, Simulation, and Training’s Behavioral Cybersecurity program. His work has been funded by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and the US Army Research Institute. He has provided cognitive security awareness training to the NASA Kennedy Space Center, DARPA, MIT, US Army DevCom, the NATO Cognitive Warfare Working Group, the Voting and Misinformation Villages at DefCon, and the Black Hat USA security conference. He holds a PhD in Cognition, Perception, and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and SANS certifications in mobile device analysis (GMOB), security auditing of wireless networks (GAWN), digital forensic examination (GCFE), and GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC).
Session
AI agent usage is accelerating us into an era of the Agentic Web, a digital landscape where machines, not humans, dominate creation, interaction, and consumption. As we inch closer to this new reality, we must ask: What are the security risks of an internet not built or experienced by, humans? LLMs have already begun to radically reshape the way we consume online information and will completely redefine how we live our online lives. From buying goods and services to searching for jobs, homes, and even relationships, agents will increasingly perform these tasks on our behalf. But convenience comes at a cost. In the coming world of bot-vs-bot warfare, scammers will unleash agents to exploit the agents of unsuspecting humans. This isn’t some distant dystopia, it’s happening right now, and it’s already creating an endless array of new vulnerabilities. We will glimpse the near future of cognitive security, where an unrelenting cascade of attack surfaces will emerge. We’ll delve into the mechanics of AI agents and the economic pressures driving their rapid adoption, explore real-world examples of how agents are already being exploited, and conclude with a look ahead at near future scenarios.