Whitepaper: Trust first, then Agents
What technology leaders need in place before AI agents can be trusted to act.
Agents promise to move AI from helping people work to doing the work itself. But an agent is only as safe as the data it can reach, and only as useful as the data it understands. Our new whitepaper sets out how to build that trust, without putting innovation on hold.
Why read it?
Most organisations aren’t starting from a blank page. AI is already in the building, through tools like Copilot, Gemini and Claude. Often it was switched on before anyone was sure what it could see, what risk it was creating or what value it was adding.
Agents raise the stakes. When an assistant drafts an email, a person checks it before it goes. When an agent acts, there may be nobody in the loop at the moment it matters. So the question shifts from “can this person see this data?” to “should this agent be allowed to act on it?”
This paper is a practical guide to answering that question.
Is this you?
If any of these sound familiar, this paper is for you:
- The board has decided to roll out AI, and the controls haven’t caught up
- Pilots have sprung up everywhere, but nobody can point to the value
- Adoption has stalled, or people have stopped trusting the answers
- Your team can see where agents would help, but has no headspace to build them
Who it’s for
CIOs, IT leaders and business executives who are being asked to deliver on AI, and want to do it in a way that is secure, measurable and built to last.
What’s inside
The market view. How Microsoft’s Frontier Firm research, McKinsey’s latest thinking and Telana’s 2026 Trends all point to the same conclusion: success with AI depends less on the model and more on the operating model, the people and the data underneath it.
Seven situations we see. The most common ways AI programmes stall, from top-down mandates to ungoverned rollouts, and the root cause they share.
The run/drive journey through a data lens. A clear, three-phase path to trusted agents:
- Get Control: make your data safe for an agent to touch, with Microsoft Purview
- Get Moving: make it sound enough to rely on, with Microsoft Fabric
- Get Ahead: run agents accountably, with Microsoft Foundry and Agent 365
Where to start. How to take the first honest look at your readiness, and turn it into a plan you can act on.
AI Readiness Assessment
The paper ends where most journeys should begin: with an honest look at where you stand. Telana’s AI Readiness Assessment gives you that look in weeks, not months.