Security Mindset
Agent security has two dimensions:- Protecting agents - From prompt injection, malicious inputs
- Protecting systems - From agent mistakes, over-reach, misuse
Prompt Injection
What Is It?
Attackers embed instructions in data that agents process:Attack Vectors
Defenses
1. Input ValidationPrompt 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
- Langfuse
- LangSmith
- OpenTelemetry
Network Security
Closed VPC Networks
Isolate agents from public internet:Private VPC
Agents (Agent 1, Agent 2, Agent 3)
ā
NAT Gateway (allowlist only)
ā
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
- Isolate - Stop affected agents immediately
- Preserve - Save traces and logs
- Analyze - Determine attack vector
- Remediate - Fix vulnerability
- Rotate - Change any exposed credentials
- Report - Document incident
Runbook
Related
Agent Permissions
Control agent capabilities
Secrets Management
Secure credential handling