Agentic AI, Bot Economics, and the New Arms Race | A Brand Spotlight at RSAC Conference 2026 with Kevin Gosschalk, Founder and CEO of Arkose Labs

A decade ago, Kevin Gosschalk was talking CAPTCHAs and bot mitigation with Marco Ciappelli at a security conference. Today, at RSAC Conference 2026, the conversation has shifted to agentic AI -- autonomous systems that browse, click, and transact on behalf of users. For Gosschalk, the Founder and CEO of Arkose Labs, the technology has changed but the challenge is familiar: how do you tell the difference between a legitimate automated actor and a malicious one?

Gosschalk explains that the vast majority of agentic traffic today is not self-identifying. Rather than announcing themselves as AI agents, these systems impersonate real Chrome browsers on Mac OS -- choosing configurations with stronger privacy features to evade fingerprinting. There are two technical categories to contend with: headless browsers running in the cloud, which can be caught through device spoofing checks, and on-device agents that control a real browser instance, which require a deeper look at behavioral patterns and intent signals. Arkose Labs builds intent models around payment fraud, fake account creation, and account compromise to distinguish the good agents from the bad.

The economic framing Gosschalk brings to this conversation is striking. He describes SMS toll fraud -- where bad actors acquire millions of premium phone numbers and trigger OTP messages from victim companies, earning three to six cents per message while costing those companies tens of millions of dollars annually. He walks through micro deposit fraud targeting fintechs. His core thesis: fraud is an economic activity, and the best defense is making attacks more expensive than they are worth. Arkose Labs builds challenge mechanisms designed to raise that cost through novel stimuli that ML models have not been trained to solve -- presenting something genuinely new forces a brute-force approach that is less effective than purpose-built attacks.

The platform's consortium model is a key differentiator. Arkose Labs protects large enterprises including Expedia and Meta, and when an attack signature appears on one customer but nowhere else in the network, its uniqueness is itself a strong fraud signal. Customers can also feed labeled outcome data back into the system -- if something slips through and later proves malicious, that label sharpens the model for the entire consortium.

Gosschalk is equally clear about the opportunity side of agentic AI. Blocking all automated traffic is no longer viable -- legitimate agentic commerce is coming, where consumers will delegate shopping, comparison, and purchasing to AI assistants. The future is not blanket blocking but granular, policy-driven enforcement: letting each customer define what kinds of agentic behavior they want to permit on their platforms. Integration is accessible -- a basic JavaScript deployment for web, SDKs for mobile, and extended support for IoT devices and CDN integrations.

This is a Brand Spotlight. A Brand Spotlight is a ~15 minute conversation designed to explore the guest, their company, and what makes their approach unique. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#spotlight

GUEST

Kevin Gosschalk, Founder and CEO, Arkose Labs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kgosschalk/

RESOURCES

Arkose Labs: https://www.arkoselabs.com

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KEYWORDS

Kevin Gosschalk, Arkose Labs, Sean Martin, Marco Ciappelli, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, agentic AI, bot detection, bot mitigation, fraud prevention, SMS toll fraud, micro deposit fraud, behavioral biometrics, intent detection, CAPTCHA, account takeover, synthetic identity, RSAC Conference 2026, cybersecurity

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