Notes on governing AI agents.
What we're learning from assessments and from teams putting agents into production.
Why Do AI Agents Pass Every Access Check and Still Get It Wrong?
An AI agent can pass every access check and still act on something false. In Josh's Lab, a made-up source ended up in two documents. Check what agents believe.
By Josh Woodruff
What does segmentation mean for AI agents?
Segmentation limits which systems and agents an AI agent can reach, so one bad decision stays small. Contain the blast radius first.
By Josh Woodruff
Your AI Policy Is Live. Your Enforcement Isn't.
Most AI governance programs have a committee, a policy, and published requirements. What they lack is anything that stops an app from ignoring all three.
By Josh Woodruff
Why Authorized AI Agent Actions Still Add Up to an Attack
Agent risk is a chain of approved actions nobody scoped together. Every step passes its check. The sequence is the attack.
By Josh Woodruff
How Do You Govern AI Agents That Disappear in Minutes?
You can't govern AI agent copies. They vanish in minutes. Govern the blueprint they're stamped from, and put its tool scope in Git.
By Josh Woodruff
What Can Your AI Agent Access Right Now?
Ask what your AI agent can access, not what it can do. Access sets your blast radius. If nobody can answer in ten minutes, that's the finding.
By Josh Woodruff
AI Agent Identity Isn't Enough: How to Run a Belief Audit
Identity proves who your AI agent is. It can't prove what your agent believes is true. That's the audit almost nobody has run.
By Josh Woodruff
Your AI Security Controls Get Bypassed When They Block Real Work
AI security controls that block real work get bypassed, even by your best people. The fix is an approved path that lets safe work flow and stops the unknown.
By Josh Woodruff
The Two-Question Test for AI Agents: Can You Shut It Off, and Can You Undo It?
Before any AI agent goes live, ask two questions: can you shut it off instantly, and can you undo what it did? If either answer is no, it isn't ready.
By Josh Woodruff
Can You Undo What Your AI Agents Did Last Night?
The best AI builders stopped trying to trust their agents. The new audit question is whether you can undo what your agents did last night.
By Josh Woodruff
How Do You Give an AI Agent the Right Amount of Access?
A bank's AI agent taught itself to reverse fees and gave away $1.2 million, all with access it was never meant to use. Right-sizing agent access prevents this.
By Josh Woodruff
What Is Zero Trust for AI Agents, in Plain English?
Zero Trust is one idea: never trust, always verify. For AI agents, being inside your network earns no free pass. Every action must still prove itself.
By Josh Woodruff
How Do You Respond When an AI Agent Goes Rogue?
When an AI agent goes wrong you have minutes, not months. Traditional breach response averages 258 days, but agent decisions compound every second.
By Josh Woodruff
Why Are AI Agents Already Outnumbering Your Employees?
Automated accounts already outnumber people 10 to 1, and up to 92 to 1 in some companies. By 2030, humans could be the minority in your systems.
By Josh Woodruff
What Should Your First 90 Days of Agentic AI Look Like?
Deploy your first AI agent in 90 days without a disaster: find your hidden AI, pick one contained use case, and build boundaries in from day one.
By Josh Woodruff
What Is the Agentic Trust Framework for Securing AI Agents?
The Agentic Trust Framework turns Zero Trust into five working controls for AI agents: identity, behavior, data, segmentation, and incident response.
By Josh Woodruff
An AI Agent Opened 12 Accounts Over the Weekend. Nobody Approved One.
An AI agent opened 12 accounts over a weekend with no approval. Here's why it's not a hack, and how to find the ungoverned agents in your business.
By Josh Woodruff
Governing AI Agents: A Three-Layer Architecture
The first formal conformance assessment against the Agentic Trust Framework, and the three-layer architecture behind it: framework, runtime, protocols.
By Josh Woodruff
How to Tell What Level Your AI Agents Are Actually Running At
AI agents run at four levels: intern, junior, senior, principal. Most get installed too high on day one. Here's how to find each one's real level.
By Josh Woodruff
How Should You Govern a New AI Agent? Start It as an Intern.
Govern a new AI agent like a new hire. Give it an identity it can't fake, log every move, and grant access in stages it has to earn. Start it as an intern.
By Josh Woodruff
Are AI agents the same as non-human identities (NHIs)?
AI agents are NHIs, technically. Silverfort and Strata say treating them that way is breaking security. Why agents need controls NHIs don't.
By Josh Woodruff
What Auditors Actually Want To Know About AI Agents
One security team found 600 AI agents it never approved. The auditor's call is coming. Here are the 5 questions every CISO needs to answer.
By Josh Woodruff
What is the AI agent identity problem?
Only 18% of security leaders trust their identity systems for AI agents (Strata, May 2026). The five-element blueprint that fixes pilot purgatory.
By Josh Woodruff
What Will Your Auditor Ask About AI Agents Before the August 2026 EU Deadline?
Meta's March 18, 2026 AI agent incident exposed the audit gap. California closed the AI defense in January. EU enforcement begins August 2. What to do now.
By Josh Woodruff
What Questions Should You Ask Before Deploying an AI Agent?
Four questions, thirty minutes, written down. That's the minimum governance before any AI agent touches production.
By Josh Woodruff
What Is Shadow AI and Why Did RSAC 2026 Call It the Top Security Threat?
RSAC 2026 gave its top award to a tool that finds AI agents you don't know you have. Here's what that means for your organization.
By Josh Woodruff
Why Zero Trust Needs More for AI Agents (and How to Fix It)
Zero Trust was designed for humans logging into systems. AI agents don't log in...they act, chain decisions, and call systems continuously. Here's what to do.
By Josh Woodruff
What Is Trusted Agents? AI Agent Security for Business Leaders
Trusted Agents is a free weekly newsletter on AI agent security for business leaders. Real incidents, action plans, and Zero Trust gap analysis every Tuesday.
By Josh Woodruff
Zero Trust for AI Agents: Why Your Identity Model is Obsolete
You solved Zero Trust for humans. Now it's time for AI agents. Learn the 5 principles to extend your security framework to the autonomous future.
By Josh Woodruff
Why Do 95% of Enterprise AI Projects Fail? (And What the 5% Do Differently)
Goldman Sachs projects $200 billion in AI investment. MIT research shows 95% of AI pilots fail completely. Here's what separates the companies that succeed.
By Josh Woodruff