Melissa Bischoping, senior director of security and product design research at Tanium, said adopting agentic artificial intelligence and other autonomous technologies could help federal agencies strengthen network resilience by automating complex security and IT tasks and improving response times.
How Is AI Transforming Federal IT Operations?
In an article published on Carahsoft.com, Bischoping wrote that agencies operating in hybrid and highly regulated environments face increasing challenges in managing endpoint visibility and responding to incidents in real time.
Bischoping said advances in AI are enabling a shift from manual IT processes to automated workflows that execute policy-driven actions.
These agentic AI systems can monitor performance, recommend or implement changes, and help detect threats earlier, allowing IT teams to focus on resilience and risk reduction rather than routine tasks.
How Can Agencies Apply a ‘Trust but Verify’ Approach to Agentic AI?
Bischoping said agencies should take a “trust but verify” approach to agentic AI by combining automation with auditability and governance.
She emphasized that autonomous systems must operate within defined guardrails, with observable decision paths and human oversight to ensure accountability while keeping operators in the loop without adding administrative burden or alert fatigue.
“Well-designed agentic tools will ensure the human remains in the loop without over-engineering proposed solutions or governance processes,” she wrote.
How Does Autonomous IT Support Mission Outcomes?
According to Bischoping, technologies like Tanium’s Autonomous IT Platform enable agencies to integrate real-time endpoint data with enterprisewide visibility and human-in-the-loop governance to support faster, more informed decision-making.
She said agentic AI workflows will support future security operations teams by helping them triage alerts, deliver actionable context for faster decisions, disrupt threats earlier in the attack cycle and provide insights to reduce the risk of future intrusions.
What Should Be the Goal of Federal IT Modernization?
Bischoping said the goal for federal agencies is to strengthen resilience by ensuring they can recover quickly and maintain mission continuity despite outages or intrusions.
“With autonomous IT grounded in real-time data and governed execution, government networks can restore operations faster and with greater confidence,” she wrote.
