An open-source runtime security framework from Microsoft designed to govern autonomous AI agents in production. It provides a layered architecture with policy enforcement, identity and access management, observability, and reliability controls that sit between agent frameworks (such as AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, and LangGraph) and the underlying infrastructure. Rather than modifying agent code, it acts as a sidecar governance layer, intercepting agent actions at runtime to enforce organizational policies, audit decisions, and prevent unsafe behaviors across multi-agent systems.
The Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit is an open-source runtime security framework purpose-built to address the governance challenges that emerge when autonomous AI agents operate in production environments. As organizations increasingly deploy multi-agent systems that can make decisions, invoke tools, and interact with external services independently, the toolkit provides a critical control plane that enforces organizational policies, manages agent identities with zero-trust principles, sandboxes execution environments, and ensures reliability through circuit breakers and rate limiting — all without requiring changes to existing agent code.
Designed for platform engineering teams, security architects, and AI/ML operations professionals, the toolkit operates as a sidecar governance layer that wraps around popular agent frameworks including Microsoft AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, and LangGraph. It intercepts agent actions at runtime, evaluates them against configurable policy rule sets, and either permits, modifies, or blocks those actions based on the organization's security and compliance requirements. This approach enables teams to adopt agentic AI while maintaining the same governance rigor they apply to traditional software systems.
The toolkit explicitly addresses all 10 categories of the OWASP Agentic Top 10, providing comprehensive coverage of known security risks in agentic AI systems. Its layered architecture separates concerns across policy enforcement, identity and access management, execution sandboxing, observability, and reliability engineering, allowing teams to adopt individual layers incrementally based on their maturity and risk tolerance. Deployed typically on Kubernetes (with Azure Kubernetes Service as a reference implementation), it integrates with existing DevOps and security toolchains to fit into established enterprise workflows.
Was this helpful?
Intercepts every agent action — including tool calls, API requests, and inter-agent messages — and evaluates them against configurable rule sets before execution. Policies can permit, modify, or block actions in real time, enabling organizations to encode compliance requirements, safety constraints, and business rules as enforceable guardrails rather than relying on agent self-regulation.
Assigns each agent a scoped identity with least-privilege permissions, treating agents with the same rigor as human users or service accounts. This prevents privilege escalation in multi-agent systems where one compromised or misbehaving agent could otherwise access resources beyond its intended scope, directly addressing OWASP Agentic Top 10 risks around excessive agency and permissions.
Isolates agent execution environments to contain the blast radius of unintended or malicious actions. Agents that generate and execute code, interact with file systems, or invoke external tools operate within controlled boundaries, preventing unauthorized access to host resources or lateral movement across the infrastructure.
Provides circuit breakers, rate limiters, retry policies, and fallback behaviors specifically designed for autonomous agent workloads. These controls prevent runaway agents from overwhelming downstream services, accumulating excessive API costs, or entering infinite loops — failure modes unique to agentic systems that traditional reliability patterns do not fully address.
Captures a comprehensive audit trail of agent decisions, tool invocations, policy evaluations, and inter-agent communications. This structured telemetry enables post-incident forensics, compliance reporting, and real-time monitoring dashboards, giving security and operations teams full visibility into what autonomous agents are doing and why.
Free
Variable (pay-as-you-go Azure pricing)
Ready to get started with Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit?
View Pricing Options →We believe in transparent reviews. Here's what Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit doesn't handle well:
Weekly insights on the latest AI tools, features, and trends delivered to your inbox.
Released publicly on April 2, 2026 as a new open-source project from Microsoft. Launched with full coverage of all 10 OWASP Agentic Top 10 categories, support for AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, and LangGraph agent frameworks, and an Azure Kubernetes Service reference deployment. The repository had accumulated 942 stars and 168 forks within its first weeks, indicating strong initial community interest. Active development is ongoing with 25 open issues and 15 open pull requests at the time of launch.
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your experience!
Get started with Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit and see if it's the right fit for your needs.
Get Started →Take our 60-second quiz to get personalized tool recommendations
Find Your Perfect AI Stack →Explore 20 ready-to-deploy AI agent templates for sales, support, dev, research, and operations.
Browse Agent Templates →