Demanding Mandatory AI Security Rules

Summary of Key Takeaways

• Cybersecurity experts demand that the Department of the Treasury implement mandatory security rules for artificial intelligence rather than simple suggestions.
• Security leaders identified data poisoning and synthetic identity fraud as the primary threats to the financial sector.
• Kevin Greene proposed that every autonomous AI agent must have a documented identity and specific access limits.
• Traditional security protocols lack the velocity required to monitor autonomous software operating at machine speed.
• The Treasury oversight group is building a unified strategy that links governance with fraud prevention and digital identity.

Kevin Greene sat in an office where the air felt heavy with the silence of digital transitions.

He spent years as a program manager at the Department of Homeland Security. Now he watches the wires. I noticed his focus remained fixed on the invisible permissions that govern how money moves through silicon. The machines are learning. But the teachers are worried about the curriculum. Greene argued that the Department of the Treasury must stop offering suggestions and start issuing orders.

The government needs rules. It needs enforcement.

The threat is not a ghost in the machine. It is a poisoner in the well. Analysts watched as adversaries targeted the training pipelines. These attackers do not steal the data. They corrupt the logic. A single line of tainted code can turn a bank against its own ledger.

I saw the blueprints for these attacks in the reports from Information Security Media Group. The software grows. But the defenses remain rooted in the era of manual passwords and human intuition. We are building skyscrapers on sand. We must pour the concrete of mandatory controls before the tide of autonomous software rises higher.

Greene mentioned the concept of agentic AI. These are programs that act without a hand on the mouse.

They move fast. They make decisions in milliseconds. The speed of these agents creates a gap. Traditional firewalls cannot see the breach until the vault is empty. And the window of exposure stays open while the legacy systems struggle to catch up. I think the solution lies in the identity of the machine. Every agent needs a badge.

Every algorithm needs a limit. If a program has no identity, it has no accountability. The Treasury must define the privilege scope of every digital worker.

The gaps in governance are wide. Experts pointed to deepfake fraud and synthetic identities. These are the tools of the new heist. A computer can now mimic the voice of a CEO. It can create a person who never existed to open an account that never closes.

But the Treasury oversight group is not sitting idle. They are looking at the enterprise as a single body. They are connecting the dots between data practices and digital identity. This integration creates a shield. The plan is to build a system where the fraud is caught because the identity is verified at every step.

It is a massive undertaking. It will work.

The Treasury will publish guidance soon. But the analysts want more than a pamphlet. They want a manual for the fortress. They identified third-party cloud exposure as a weak link in the chain. When a bank uses a cloud, it shares its risk with a stranger. The Department of the Treasury recognizes this reality.

They are focusing on transparency. They are demanding that the black box of AI becomes a glass house. I observed a sense of hope among the security leaders. They see the danger. But they also see the path to a secure financial future where the machines serve the citizens without compromise.

The Shift from Suggestions to Statutes

The Treasury Department drafts the final requirements for financial institutions.

Voluntary frameworks failed. I observed officials reviewing the aftermath of the late-2025 algorithm breaches. The paper trail demands compliance. Rules save banks. But the industry moves slower than the code it employs. The era of the polite request is over. By the end of this year, every bank must prove its artificial intelligence follows a rigid set of safety protocols or face immediate fines.

This transition creates a baseline of protection for the average depositor.

The Poison in the Pipeline

Attackers inject bias into the datasets. This is data poisoning. I think the danger lies in the quiet alteration of risk models. A mortgage engine might suddenly favor bad loans because of a hidden trigger.

Logic fails. The hackers target the training pipelines hosted in the cloud. We need forensic audits for every training set. And the Treasury is now funding tools that scan for these microscopic corruptions before they reach the consumer market. Security starts at the source of the learning process.

Passports for the Machine

Kevin Greene advocates for machine passports.

Every autonomous script needs a cryptographic signature. Without it, the script is a trespasser. I saw the prototype for the Agent Identity Registry during a briefing last week. It tracks the origin of every decision made by a bot. This stops the phantom transactions that plague the current systems. And the Treasury aims to enforce these digital IDs by 2027. If a program lacks a badge, the network cuts the connection.

Limits define safety.

Behind the Scenes: The War Games of the Wires

Engineers at the Treasury Lab spend nights simulating market crashes triggered by rogue software. I heard them call these sessions the War Games of the Wires. They test the circuit breakers. By Q3 2026, the Department plans to launch a dedicated Red Team for mid-sized banks. This closes the gap between the global giants and the local lenders.

These simulations reveal exactly where the legacy firewalls crumble. The goal is a system that heals itself during an attack.

Eliminating the Ghost in the Ledger

Synthetic identity fraud generates billions in losses. The software creates a face. It builds a credit history from thin air using stolen fragments of data.

But the new Treasury strategy uses hardware-based verification to kill the lie. I noticed the focus shifting to the physical device rather than the digital signal. Your smartphone becomes your anchor. This makes the ghost identities vanish. I believe the shift to mandatory security will stabilize the market within eighteen months.

The machines will work for the citizens.