Shipping Agents, Not Vulnerabilities with Ian Webster, PromptFoo CEO
As LLM apps evolve from simple chatbots to tool-using agents, the attack surface explodes, and the old security playbooks don’t hold. In this episode of Alexa’s Input (AI), Alexa Griffith sits down with Ian Webster, co-founder and CEO of PromptFoo, to break down what AI security actually looks like in practice: automated red teaming, prompt injection and jailbreak testing, evaluation workflows that scale, and why “guardrails alone” is not a security strategy.Ian shares how PromptFoo grew from a side project into a widely adopted open-source standard, what it means to raise multi-millions in a fast-moving market, and how enterprises are approaching the full vulnerability lifecycle, from finding issues to triage, remediation, and validation. Ian also discusses the “lethal trifecta” that makes agents fundamentally risky (untrusted input + sensitive data + exfil path), and why MCP security isn’t just about users and tools, it’s about dangerous tool combinations and rogue servers.Podcast LinksWatch: https://www.youtube.com/@alexa_griffithRead: https://alexasinput.substack.com/Listen: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/alexagriffith/More: https://linktr.ee/alexagriffithWebsite: https://alexagriffith.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexa-griffith/Find out more about the guest at:PromptFoo Website: https://www.promptfoo.dev/Github: https://github.com/promptfoo/promptfooIan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianww/Chapters00:00 Introduction to AI Security Challenges02:06 Funding and Growth of PromptFu06:16 The Genesis of PromptFu11:05 Career Journey and Lessons Learned12:53 Understanding AI Red Teaming17:36 Recent AI Security Vulnerabilities19:46 The Dual Nature of AI in Security21:47 Understanding the Lethal Trifecta in AI Security24:22 Exploring Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Its Security Implications26:22 Common Security Issues in MCP Systems28:17 The Role of Identity and Permissions in AI Security30:00 Practical Implications of Using PromptFoo for Developers31:33 Evaluating Language Models: Challenges and Techniques36:34 The Limitations of Guardrails in AI Security38:25 Best Practices for Engineers in AI Development39:58 Future Trends in AI and Security42:28 Everyday Applications of AI and Language Models