# Cursor's Head of Security: Never trust the agent writing your code

DevFeed: [Cursor's Head of Security: Never trust the agent writing your code](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/cursor-s-head-of-security-never-trust-the-agent-writing-your-code-1938.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://1password.com/blog/never-trust-your-coding-agent>)

Author: info@1password.com (Chris Fowler)

Published: 2026-06-16T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog on 1Password Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-on-1password-blog.md>)

Topics: [cursor](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cursor.md>), [AI-assisted coding](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-assisted-coding.md>), [AI Bots](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-bots.md>)

Tags: [agent](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agent.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [cursor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cursor.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [llms](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/llms.md>), [podcasts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/podcasts.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>)

## AI overview

Cursor's security leader argues that coding agents should not be trusted by default because they are non-deterministic, use tools, process untrusted input, and may operate near sensitive systems. The article advocates secure-by-default workflows and automated policy-as-code controls to contain potential damage while maintaining development speed.

## Source excerpt

"The hardest thing in security is always the chaos," according to Travis McPeak, Head of Security at Cursor. He shared this with Nancy Wang, CTO of 1Password, and Dev Tagare, Senior Director of Engineering at Google, on a recent episode of Zero-Shot Learning, the podcast about how AI gets built, secured, and deployed. "We're always going to have more that we have to be doing than we can actually do." Travis has worked within that constraint in security roles at Netflix and Databricks and now at Cursor, the AI-native IDE, where agents write production code for a rapidly growing base of developers worldwide. Agents in the development pipeline introduce a new kind of actor. They are non-deterministic, have access to tools, are exposed to untrusted input, and often operate near credentials, source code, and production systems. All with no guarantee that past behavior predicts future actions. Unlike developers who earn trust through accountability and predictability, agents offer neither. Sitting down with Nancy and Dev, Travis said that the only way to secure agents is to design secure-by-default workflows so that when they inevitably misbehave, the damage is contained. Security can pick winning battles Security teams are still grappling with how to classify and manage agent identities, but businesses aren't waiting to adopt AI and agentic tooling. The 1Password Access-Trust Gap Report found that 73% of employees are encouraged to use AI for some part of their workload. But policy enforcement clearly isn't keeping up, since 37% say they only follow company AI policies "most of the time." Travis embraces speed as a simple fact of the modern tech business model. "Security teams exist to serve the business. Your job is to do the best risk minimization that you can within the amount of slowdown that a business will tolerate. I'm in 'ship, ship, ship.' I want the company to thrive," he said. Moving at the speed of business means that security teams often have more on their p