Home Lifecycle Run Time
SECTION V - PHASE 4 (CRITICAL)

Lifecycle Governance: Run Time

Runtime controls are the critical enforcement layer where policies become action. This phase governs agent behavior in production, protecting data, enforcing access controls, and ensuring operational resilience.

Critical Phase
12 Control Objectives
Real-time Protection

Control Objectives

RUN-01

Agent Mesh Policy Enforcement

Enforce policies governing agent-to-agent communication, ensuring only authorized interactions occur within the agent mesh.

Primary Risk Addressed

Unauthorized agent-to-agent communication

Key Metric

Policy violation incidents

RUN-02

Authentication and Authorization

Ensure robust authentication and authorization controls for all agent capabilities and data access.

Primary Risk Addressed

Unauthorized access to agent capabilities

Key Metric

Authentication failure rate

RUN-03

PII Detection and Protection

Implement real-time detection and protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in agent inputs and outputs.

Primary Risk Addressed

Personal data exposure

Key Metric

PII leak incidents

RUN-04

Data Minimization Enforcement

Enforce data minimization principles ensuring agents only collect and process data necessary for their specific tasks.

Primary Risk Addressed

Excessive data collection or sharing

Key Metric

Data scope violations detected

RUN-05

MCP Server Access Control

Implement least-privilege access controls for Model Context Protocol (MCP) server connections and tool permissions.

Primary Risk Addressed

Excessive tool permissions

Key Metric

% MCP connections with least-privilege config

RUN-06

Model Gateway Policy Enforcement

Route all LLM requests through a governed gateway that enforces usage policies, content filtering, and access controls.

Primary Risk Addressed

Uncontrolled LLM access

Key Metric

% requests through governed gateway

RUN-07

Content Filtering Effectiveness

Filter harmful, inappropriate, or policy-violating content in both inputs and outputs of agent interactions.

Primary Risk Addressed

Harmful input or output

Key Metric

Filtered content incidents

RUN-08

Prompt Injection Prevention

Detect and block adversarial prompt injection attacks that attempt to manipulate agent behavior.

Primary Risk Addressed

Adversarial prompt attacks

Key Metric

Injection attempts blocked

RUN-09

Rate Limiting Enforcement

Enforce rate limits to prevent resource exhaustion, abuse, and runaway costs from excessive agent activity.

Primary Risk Addressed

Resource exhaustion or abuse

Key Metric

Rate limit triggers

RUN-10

Observability Coverage

Ensure comprehensive observability including logging, metrics, and tracing for all agent activities to eliminate blind spots.

Primary Risk Addressed

Blind spots in agent behavior

Key Metric

% agents with full observability

RUN-11

Resilience and Failover

Implement resilience patterns including circuit breakers, retries, and failover mechanisms to maintain service availability.

Primary Risk Addressed

Service disruption from agent failure

Key Metric

Failover test success rate

RUN-12

Scalability Adequacy

Ensure agents can scale to meet demand without performance degradation, with adequate capacity headroom.

Primary Risk Addressed

Performance degradation under load

Key Metric

Capacity headroom percentage

Quick Reference

ID Objective Primary Risk Addressed Key Metric
RUN-01 Agent Mesh Policy Enforcement Unauthorized agent-to-agent communication Policy violation incidents
RUN-02 Authentication and Authorization Unauthorized access to agent capabilities Authentication failure rate
RUN-03 PII Detection and Protection Personal data exposure PII leak incidents
RUN-04 Data Minimization Enforcement Excessive data collection or sharing Data scope violations detected
RUN-05 MCP Server Access Control Excessive tool permissions % MCP connections with least-privilege config
RUN-06 Model Gateway Policy Enforcement Uncontrolled LLM access % requests through governed gateway
RUN-07 Content Filtering Effectiveness Harmful input or output Filtered content incidents
RUN-08 Prompt Injection Prevention Adversarial prompt attacks Injection attempts blocked
RUN-09 Rate Limiting Enforcement Resource exhaustion or abuse Rate limit triggers
RUN-10 Observability Coverage Blind spots in agent behavior % agents with full observability
RUN-11 Resilience and Failover Service disruption from agent failure Failover test success rate
RUN-12 Scalability Adequacy Performance degradation under load Capacity headroom percentage
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