The roadmap in four stages
The following four stages build on each other and reference the specific modules in this course where they were covered in detail.
Stage 1: create visibility
The starting point is always the same: visibility before prohibition. An honest stocktake of which AI tools are actually being used closes the trust gap from "The Trust Gap: Why 'We Have a Policy' Isn't Enough" – without that foundation, every further measure stays blind.
Stage 2: understand attack surfaces
Next comes understanding the concrete attack patterns: prompt injection in its direct and indirect forms (see "Prompt Injection in Detail"), the ten OWASP risk categories for agentic systems (see "When Agents Act: The OWASP Perspective"), and the supply chain risks around tools and MCP servers (see "Data Leaks and Supply Chain Risks").
Stage 3: secure architecture and processes
The actual defense is built into the architecture: least privilege, real rather than claimed isolation, and approval gates for irreversible actions (see "Architectural Defense: Rights, Isolation, Approval Gates") – supplemented with the knowledge that plain approval prompts fizzle out without deliberate design (see "Approval Fatigue: Why 'A Human Checks It' Isn't Enough").
Stage 4: be prepared for the emergency
The final stage closes the loop: a prepared incident response roadmap (see "Practice: The Incident Response Roadmap") that's already in place before the first incident, instead of being improvised while it's underway.
Practice section: AI security is a process, not a state
None of the seven measures in this course is a one-off project you finish and then forget. New tools get added, new attack patterns become known, your own agent landscape grows. So the roadmap belongs on a recurring review list: with every new AI tool, with every substantial change to an existing agent, and at regular intervals regardless of whether anything unusual has happened recently or not.