Understand the context.
Control the consequence.
A security agent for agentic environments should connect what exists, who can act and what each action could affect. The proposed Contextual Trust approach combines discovery, context-aware decisions and quantum-resilience planning.
Explore discoverySee delivery stages →Evidence first. Authority before action.
Original conceptual architecture. Each step must preserve source evidence and make uncertainty visible.
- 01 · DiscoverCollect authorised metadata within an explicit scope.
- 02 · UnderstandConnect ownership, dependencies, purpose and evidence freshness.
- 03 · AssessEvaluate exposure and explain confidence and missing evidence.
- 04 · DecideCheck identity, task scope, policy and current approval.
- 05 · VerifyRecord the outcome, confirm recovery and reassess changes.
Use bounded permissions, isolated execution and separate collection from remediation. Retrieved content must remain data; it must not grant new authority. Enforce permissions in the system executing an action and record what actually happened.
Map the estate behind the agent.
Proposed discovery coverage. A record should include its source, observation time, collection method, scope and confidence. An unavailable source should appear as a coverage gap.
| Area | What to establish | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Agents, models and tools | Owner, model/provider configuration, tool connections, versions and declared purpose. | Understand the intended workflow and which changes need review. |
| Identity and authority | Service identities, delegated permissions, credential references, approval scope and expiry. | Identify who may act and whether authority still applies. |
| Context and data | Knowledge sources, provenance, sensitivity, retrieval boundaries and data destinations. | Review untrusted inputs and potential data exposure. |
| Software, hardware and AI dependencies | SBOM, HBOM and AIBOM evidence, build lineage, deployment context and supplier declarations. | Connect findings to the services and owners affected. |
| Certificates, keys and cryptography | Certificate metadata, algorithms, expiry, key-management references and CBOM evidence. | Plan lifecycle changes and investigate cryptographic dependencies without collecting private key material. |
| Pipelines and cloud services | Authorised configuration, artifact digests, deployment evidence and connector health. | Distinguish source observations from verified deployed state. |
A bill of materials is evidence with a scope and date. It does not by itself establish complete coverage, secure operation or quantum readiness.
Keep decisions close to their consequences.
Check the action boundary
Bind an action to the agent identity, tenant, task, target resource and policy version. Recheck authority immediately before a consequential action, including approval expiry and revocation.
Contain untrusted context
Track provenance and sensitivity, validate tool arguments, constrain data destinations and test hostile retrieved content. Model output should not change the policy that constrains it.
Make review workable
Show the proposed change, affected resources, evidence and unresolved questions. Route uncertain or high-impact actions to an accountable owner.
Recover explicitly
Keep durable job state and audit evidence. Plan for retries, cancellation, partial failures and repeated requests; verify the resulting state before reporting success.
Design reference: NIST design tenets for agent identity management systems. The architecture above is Contextual Trust’s proposal, not an implemented or NIST-certified product.
Scale the controls with the workload.
Enterprise scale is a delivery requirement to demonstrate, not a capacity claim.
Isolate every tenant
Separate identities, secrets, records, search, exports and background jobs. Test cross-tenant denial throughout the workflow.
Bound collection and execution
Use scoped connectors, queues, quotas, rate limits and backoff. Attribute model usage, infrastructure cost and operations to the correct tenant and project.
Keep evidence operational
Expose connector health, freshness, missed coverage and policy changes. Support incident investigation with retention and access controls.
Define target concurrency, throughput, latency, recovery time and cost budgets. Verify isolation, credential rotation, rate-limit behaviour and recovery under realistic failures. No enterprise load benchmark is claimed here.
Discover dependencies. Plan a tested transition.
Connect cryptographic inventory with service ownership, data lifetime and supplier upgrade paths. Quantum resilience belongs in the same operating model as identity, certificate lifecycle and recovery.
- LocateIdentify algorithms, protocols, certificates, libraries and key-management dependencies.
- PrioritiseConsider service criticality, long-lived data, exposure and replacement effort.
- ValidateCheck supplier support, interoperability, performance and applicable requirements.
- TransitionPilot changes with owner approval, rollback plans and continuing monitoring.
NIST’s FIPS 203, 204 and 205 address post-quantum key establishment and digital signatures. Their existence does not establish readiness of a particular deployment; inventory findings must lead to system-specific assessment and testing.
Reference: NIST approval of the first three post-quantum FIPS standards. Read the post-quantum explainer and blockchain security introduction.
Know what exists and what comes next.
| Stage | Scope | Status / acceptance |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge foundation | Security library, original conceptual diagrams, references and enterprise architecture links. | Available on this website. |
| Discovery foundation | Read-only, scoped collection; durable observations; coverage gaps; export and comparison. | Proposed product stage. An existing local inventory prototype is separate from this website; it is not a hosted enterprise service. |
| Enterprise security agent | Tenant-aware ingestion, canonical asset relationships, policy evaluation and accountable review. | Planned. Requires real connector acceptance, isolation tests and demonstrated recovery. |
| Controlled execution and scale | Approved remediation adapters, action-time enforcement, operating limits and measured service performance. | Planned. Requires end-to-end validation before production or capacity claims. |
| Cryptographic transition | Owner-reviewed priorities, supplier evidence and tested migration decisions. | Planned. Readiness must be demonstrated for each affected service. |
Can I run a scan from this website?
No. This site provides educational content and the proposed product direction. A scan needs an implemented collector, explicit authorised scope and verified source access.
Does discovery prove a system is secure or quantum safe?
No. Discovery establishes scoped observations. Missing coverage, declarations and unverified relationships must remain visible; security and migration decisions need further evidence.
Where does broader enterprise architecture fit?
Contextual Trust stands on its own as the security initiative. For deeper context, authority, governance and enterprise architecture, visit Contextual Agentic.
Build understanding before changing systems.
Explore identity, certificates, cryptography, blockchain and quantum readiness in the security library.
Open the security library