Platform / Agentic Gateway
Surface 4 of 4 — AI Agents & MCP
Govern AI Agents at the Protocol Chokepoint — See Every Agent, Control Every Action
68% of organizations cannot distinguish agent actions from human actions (CSA/Aembit, March 2026), and only 18% are highly confident their IAM can manage agent identities at all (CSA/Strata, February 2026). AI agents act at machine speed, without waiting for anyone to review the action first. Whiteswan's Agentic Gateway sits at the MCP chokepoint — the point every agent tool call must pass through — issuing each agent its own cryptographic identity at spawn and evaluating every tool call against policy before it executes.
The Agentic Governance Gap
Agents Don't Wait for a Security Review.
AI agents call tools, query databases, and take multi-step actions across enterprise systems without the pauses a human session naturally has. Traditional identity tooling was not built to evaluate a tool call that happens in milliseconds, chained to a dozen other tool calls, initiated by something that isn't a person and doesn't have a static credential to vault. 68% of organizations already cannot tell agent actions apart from human ones in their logs (CSA/Aembit, March 2026) — which means when something goes wrong, the first question ("who authorized this, and what did it actually do") often has no answer.
The Mechanism
Cryptographic Identity at Spawn. Evaluation at Every Call.
Cryptographic identity at spawn
Each AI agent is issued its own per-session cryptographic key pair via SPIFFE/SPIRE the moment it spawns — verifiable, scoped to that session, and retired automatically when the session ends. No shared credentials between agents, no long-lived agent tokens sitting unused.
Chokepoint discovery
The gateway sees every agent and every tool call that routes through the MCP layer — not a sample, not a periodic scan. Discovery happens at the protocol chokepoint every agent action must pass through.
Approve-before-connect
Before an agent's tool call executes, the gateway evaluates it against policy — identity, scope, target sensitivity, and behavioral context — and approves, denies, or requires elevation.
Next-call block & in-flight drain
Once a policy violation is detected, Whiteswan blocks the agent's next call and drains any in-flight session. (Mid-operation interruption of a call already executing is not yet a confirmed capability.)
Single-hop delegation control
Whiteswan governs an agent's direct tool calls and delegated actions to a single hop. Multi-hop delegation lineage — tracing an action through a chain of agent-to-agent delegation — is in design, not yet live.
Unified audit trail
Every agent action logs to the same immutable trail as the other three surfaces, capturing the event types needed to answer the five questions auditors ask.
Swipe →
| Capability | Status | What It Delivers |
|---|---|---|
| SPIFFE/SPIRE identity at spawn | Verified | Per-session cryptographic identity, retired at session end |
| Chokepoint discovery | Verified | Full visibility into agents and tool calls at the MCP layer |
| Approve-before-connect | Verified | Policy evaluation before tool execution |
| Next-call block / in-flight drain | Verified | Stops further action once a violation is detected |
| Single-hop delegation governance | Verified | Direct agent tool calls and one-hop delegation |
| Multi-hop delegation lineage | In design | Not yet live — do not represent as current |
| Unified audit trail | Verified | Same immutable trail as all four surfaces |
Technical Validation
OWASP Agentic Top 10 and the Five Questions.
Security architects evaluating agent governance need more than a product pitch — they need to see the mechanism mapped against a known risk framework. Whiteswan's Agentic Gateway is mapped against the OWASP Agentic Top 10 in full detail in Doc 3: Prove You Control It.
Compliance and audit teams need a different kind of proof: an answer to five specific questions, continuously, not just when asked.
Swipe →
Who authorized this agent to act?
What was it permitted to do?
Who approved that scope?
What did the agent actually do?
Can I revoke its access right now?
Every one of these is answerable directly from the Agentic Gateway's audit trail. See how this connects to compliance workflows on Proof & Audit.
Deployment
Governance That Doesn't Block the Build.
The Agentic Gateway is designed for teams already deploying agents, not teams debating whether to. It sits at the MCP chokepoint without requiring changes to how agents are built or which orchestration framework is in use. Discovery and governance apply to what's already running — no rebuild required to get visibility.
Or explore how this surface connects to the other three: