The Agentic Trust Framework: Zero Trust Governance for AI Agents (cloudsecurityalliance.org)

The Agentic Trust Framework (ATF) has been introduced as an innovative open governance specification tailored for the unique challenges posed by autonomous AI agents. By applying established Zero Trust principles, the ATF offers a structured method that allows organizations to deploy AI agents with meaningful autonomy while ensuring robust governance and security controls. This framework fills a critical gap, recognizing that traditional security models are insufficient for the non-deterministic behaviors of AI agents. It emphasizes continuous verification of trust and clearly defines the operational criteria needed for safe AI agent governance. Significantly, the ATF consists of five core elements—Identity, Behavior, Data Governance, Segmentation, and Incident Response—each addressing essential questions about AI agent operation. For instance, it emphasizes the importance of monitored agent behavior to earn trust over time and establishes a maturity model for progressively granting autonomy, akin to human employee roles. This approach not only aligns with existing industry standards like the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications, but it also fosters a framework that organizations can implement using current security tools, ultimately encouraging safer and more efficient integration of AI agents into business processes.