AIBP Conference & Exhibition Philippines 2026 Day 2: Resilience and Accountability in the Agentic Era
When many companies were blocking ChatGPT, Globe gave it to every employee. Today about 90% of its staff use AI at work, and some finance and business teams are building their own software.
As AI moves from making suggestions to taking action, leaders have to decide how much they can trust it with, and who stands behind it when it acts.
Security and technology leaders spent the day on the groundwork that makes that trust possible. Their answers pointed to strong basics, and to a person who stays accountable for everything AI does.
Security Works When People Use It
Strong security starts with basics everyone can follow. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and regular testing come first for Nayer Raymundo-Lagmay, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Data Protection Officer at Kubota Philippines, because a single compromised account can undo the most advanced technology. New tools come once those basics are proven.
Those basics hold only when people are willing to use them. Controls that feel hard to use push people to find a way around them, so Garrett Silao, CISO at Globe, treats ease of use as part of good security design. When employees trust security and find it simple, they report issues and help defend the company.
The same care applies when AI joins the security team. At Globe, AI sorts alerts and hunts for threats while a person makes every final call, and automation grows only once a process is fully mature.
Local knowledge adds another layer of defence. Threats that start in the Philippines are best understood by the teams that face them, which is why both Garrett and Nayer want Philippine companies to have a shared way to swap notes on what they see.
Security holds up best when people find it easy to follow and are trusted to be part of it.
Resilience Is Measured in Patient Care
In a hospital, resilience is measured by what patients feel. Charles Alexis S.D. Aquino, Chief Information Officer at Medi Linx Laboratory, tracks outages by how long patients wait for their results. He sees regulation as a guide that gives teams the confidence to change. "As long as you have considered all the guidelines, you'll be able to be more confident in introducing new technologies," he said.
Planning around patients also means planning for the day systems fail. "Zero downtime on the IT environment now is actually a myth," said Randy Sac, IT Shared Services Head at Mount Grace Hospitals.
Restoring systems and continuing patient care need separate plans, so every department should keep a written manual process ready for when systems go down. Randy sees this as a shared job between IT and clinical teams, since patients feel an outage first. He encourages leaders to bring both teams together when planning how patient care continues during an outage.
Technology is only as effective as the people using it. "You can buy proper tech, but having people who can execute it properly is pretty important," said Dr. Mike Muin, Chief Executive Officer of MedProjects.
Resilience comes from people who plan ahead, so patients feel as little of a failure as possible.
Strong Governance Gives AI Room to Act
Confidence to open AI up widely comes from the foundations underneath it. Anton Reynaldo Bonifacio, Chief Intelligence and Trust Officer at Globe, estimates about 80% of the controls needed to secure AI are existing basics, such as managing unapproved apps and building security into software from the start.
His role brings AI, data, cybersecurity and digital policy under one leader, so trust is managed as a whole. "If your hygiene foundations are strong, your confidence to be able to drive innovation is much higher," he said.
Keeping the purpose clear helps guide those choices. For Globe, AI is a tool for solving Filipino problems, such as bringing banking and connectivity to people in remote areas.
How much freedom AI gets should depend on what happens if it gets something wrong. Rocky Bacani, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Meralco, gives AI more freedom as the risk goes down. Low-risk tasks can run on their own with regular review. At a utility where safety comes first, high-stakes decisions stay with people.
People naturally take the easiest path, so Rocky designs governance to make the approved path the easy one. When the safe option is also the simplest, employees have little reason to look for a workaround. "The easiest route should be the safest route," he said.
Meralco's new AI Transformation Office starts by making sure every agent's actions can be observed and repeated, so the organisation can stand behind what its AI does.
Some moments call for a person from the start. For Sunish Sadasivan, Vice President of Revenue Management & eCommerce at Filinvest Hospitality, AI can answer a guest's late-night question about check-out times. However, a guest upset on their anniversary should always reach a member of staff.
Good governance gives AI room to act, while people keep responsibility for the outcome.
The Conversation Continues Across ASEAN
Day Two showed that trust in AI is built well before an agent takes its first action. It grows from basics that employees find easy to follow, and from leaders who stay accountable for what their AI does.
Put simply, AI earns more trust when its foundations are strong and people stay responsible for the results.
The questions raised in Manila are ones enterprises across Southeast Asia are now working through, from sharing local threat intelligence to governing AI agents as quickly as teams build them.
The conversation continues on the AIBP ASEAN B2B Growth Podcast, where leaders across Southeast Asia share how they are putting AI to work.
About ASEAN Innovation Business Platform (AIBP)
The ASEAN Innovation Business Platform (AIBP) is an initiative focused on enabling innovation and strategic partnerships across public and private organisations in Southeast Asia. Through curated engagement activities, AIBP supports the growth of regional government agencies, enterprises and solution providers in navigating key themes such as innovation, digital transformation, and sustainability.
Learn more at www.aibp.sg
