Tanium debuts Ask Agent to automate IT operations & security

Tanium has introduced Ask Agent, an agentic AI feature integrated into its platform to automate IT operations and cybersecurity workflows.

Ask Agent is designed as a real-time AI teammate within the Tanium environment, capable of responding to questions, surfacing operational insights, and executing endpoint changes while maintaining human oversight. The system leverages continuous telemetry and contextual awareness to support autonomous decision-making for IT and security teams, aiming to move agencies away from manual command lines to more intuitive, natural-language-driven controls.

Operational efficiency

The new AI assistant is positioned to shift Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) towards a model where AI not only provides information, but can take informed and secure actions on behalf of administrators. The rollout has already been met with reports from enterprise IT, healthcare, and real estate organisations of improved efficiency due to reduced manual processes and faster troubleshooting.

"IT needs agentic AI - agents that understand each specific IT environment, provide thoughtful change management and that automate comprehensive and intelligent QA with automatic rollback if failures occur," said Orion Hindawi, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Tanium. "AI that learns from what's worked for other environments, steers you away from risky changes and partners with you to build resilience. That's Tanium AI, and it begins with Ask Agent."

AI-driven workflows

Ask Agent has been built to deliver a seamless AI-powered experience, supporting data discovery, software management, dashboard summarisation, and in-console documentation. Key functions include the ability to diagnose and remediate issues across endpoints, identify outdated or unauthorised software, and summarise key operational metrics using natural language. The system incorporates human-in-the-loop control, allowing administrators to oversee and approve actions or revert changes if needed.

From an efficiency standpoint, Ask Agent's data discovery capability supports quick investigation and troubleshooting by correlating information from multiple sources, aiming to speed up root cause analysis. In software management, it provides tools to identify and address outdated applications, utilising automated deployment aligned with standardised change processes.

For reporting, Ask Agent translates data into natural language summaries, which can be shared across teams for greater stakeholder visibility. Its in-console documentation function provides on-demand guidance, summarising complex topics and suggesting best practices to help users onboard more quickly and address issues as they arise.

User experience

"Tanium Ask Agent empowers IT operations and security teams to overcome complex operations and security posture challenges through the simplicity of a natural language prompt. The agentic workflows for discovery and remediation are purpose-built to scale operational efficiency with the focus on outcomes, allowing specialized personnel to focus on more strategic initiatives," said Matt Quinn, Chief Technology Officer at Tanium. 

The launch has drawn feedback from early enterprise adopters who point to the practical benefits realised so far. Matthew Major, Information Security Engineer at Myriad Genetics, commented: "What I anticipate will set Ask Agent apart is how it understands our environment and makes contextually aware recommendations aligned to product best practices - it advises, adapts and gives us an easy button to take action."

Shareef Ellis, IT Operations Manager at PDS Health, noted: "Tanium Ask Agent makes AI practical for our team. It brings real-time expertise through natural language, removing the need to learn complex queries and allowing us to focus on delivering solutions."

Jose Luis Ruiz Ruiz, Senior Director Endpoint Automation at JLL, highlighted the value of multilingual support, stating: "I was excited to learn that we can interact with the Ask Agent in our native languages - whether it's Spanish, German or Japanese. As a team with many non-native English speakers, this feature makes the console more user-friendly, and I expect will save our team hours every week."

Availability

Ask Agent is currently available to eligible Tanium Cloud customers in the US Commercial and UK regions through the Tanium Core Platform. Activation requires enabling specific platform features in the Console. Licensing and pricing details are subject to change.