Cloud and AI bills looking a bit high? Your AI agents may have been let loose and run up huge spending costs

Date:
Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:05:00 +0000

Description:
Many enterprises don't have the safeguards in place to prevent AI from using excessive compute, tokens and more.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter One simple prompt could lead to swathes of downstream compute, experts warn Attackers could even exploit your uncontrolled AI to run up costs Greater visibility and circuit breakers are two solutions Data security company Forcepoint has revealed a major issue
with AI agents, but unlike many AI security threats, it doesn't involve stealing data or compromising the model.

Instead, if left to its own devices, Forcepoint says agentic AI could
actually consume excessive amounts of compute, tokens, API calls or other resources if sufficient safeguards and limits aren't in place, leading to higher-than-anticipated enterprise cloud bills. Moreover, the company's research argues that the problem has become more important as AI has become more complex. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: Enterprises warned to keep an eye on AI agent compute usage The result of overwhelmingly complex agentic AI systems is that one single and apparently simply user request could lead to tens or hundreds of downstream operations. Forcepoint labels this as 'unbound consumption'.

Crucially, the analysis found that high compute and token consumption could actually be pretty hard to detect and existing security protocols are
unlikely to pick it up, because there doesn't even need to be an attacker for the impacts to take place. All you need is a badly configured automation or a long-running AI session to accidentally lead to runaway costs. You may like Wanted: Token spend control and governance without slowing down agentic AI innovation Don't count the savings until you know what the AI actually costs Beware the token trap: Why saving on inference might put your ADLC at risk

However, Forcepoint worries that attackers can indeed step in to exploit this vulnerability, with malicious users generating huge workloads and consuming massive compute for their own benefit after obtaining an enterprise's credentials, letting them pick up the bill.

Solutions can be as complex as agentic AI itself, but they're now more necessary than ever. Firstly, companies should set budgets at multiple, finer levels, such as API keys, individual users and teams. They should also have greater monitoring powers over where costs are attributed to. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get
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But Forcepoint also calls for agentic circuit breakers to prevent workload
and costs from compounding.

"Security teams rarely watch cloud billing dashboards. Finance rarely reviews prompt patterns or agent design," security researcher Jyotika Singh wrote in an urge for enterprises to take the risk more seriously. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/cloud-and-ai-bills-looking-a-bit-high-your-ai-ag ents-may-have-been-let-loose-and-run-up-huge-spending-costs


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