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Security Mindset

Agent security has two dimensions:
  1. Protecting agents - From prompt injection, malicious inputs
  2. Protecting systems - From agent mistakes, over-reach, misuse
Both require defense in depth.

Prompt Injection

What Is It?

Attackers embed instructions in data that agents process:

Attack Vectors

Defenses

1. Input Validation
2. Delimiter Isolation
3. Output Filtering
4. Instruction Hierarchy

Prompt Injection Evaluation

Testing Your Agents

Create an evaluation suite:

Automated Security Scans

Trace Monitoring

Why Monitor Traces?

Traces reveal:
  • What agents are actually doing
  • Anomalous behavior patterns
  • Security incidents in progress
  • Performance bottlenecks

Implementing Traces

Trace Analysis

Observability Stack

Network Security

Closed VPC Networks

Isolate agents from public internet:

Private VPC

Agents (Agent 1, Agent 2, Agent 3) ↓ NAT Gateway (allowlist only) ↓ Allowed Destinations: api.anthropic.com, github.com, internal-api

VPC Architecture

All agent traffic routes through NAT Gateway with strict egress allowlist. No direct internet access.

Egress Controls

Service Mesh

Data Protection

Secrets in Context

Never pass secrets to agents:

PII Handling

Security Checklist

  • Input validation and sanitization
  • Output filtering for sensitive data
  • Instruction hierarchy (system > user)
  • Prompt injection test suite
  • Trace logging enabled
  • Anomaly detection alerts
  • Network egress controls
  • Secrets management (not in prompts)
  • PII redaction
  • Regular security audits

Incident Response

When Compromise Detected

  1. Isolate - Stop affected agents immediately
  2. Preserve - Save traces and logs
  3. Analyze - Determine attack vector
  4. Remediate - Fix vulnerability
  5. Rotate - Change any exposed credentials
  6. Report - Document incident

Runbook

Agent Permissions

Control agent capabilities

Secrets Management

Secure credential handling