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CIS Controls v8.1 Mapping for AI Agent Governance

Disclaimer: This document is a self-assessment mapping, NOT a validated certification. Organizations must perform their own assessments with qualified auditors. CIS Controls® is a trademark of the Center for Internet Security.


Overview

This document maps AGT governance capabilities to the CIS Controls v8.1 safeguards relevant to AI agent infrastructure. CIS Controls provide a prioritized set of actions that collectively form a defense-in-depth approach to cybersecurity.

Coverage Summary

Metric Value
CIS Controls assessed 18
Relevant safeguards mapped 42
Fully addressed 28 (67%)
Partially addressed 10 (24%)
Gaps 4 (9%)

Mapping Table

CIS Control 1: Inventory and Control of Enterprise Assets

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
1.1 Establish and maintain detailed enterprise asset inventory ✅ Full agent-discovery — scans processes, configs, repos for unregistered agents
1.2 Address unauthorized assets ✅ Full AgentIdentity — unknown DIDs rejected by trust verification
1.3 Utilize an active discovery tool ✅ Full agent-discovery — continuous scanning with reconciliation
1.4 Use dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) logging ⬜ N/A Network-level, outside AGT scope

CIS Control 2: Inventory and Control of Software Assets

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
2.1 Establish and maintain a software inventory ✅ Full MCP server registry + McpCveFeed package tracking
2.2 Ensure authorized software is currently supported ✅ Full McpCveFeed — CVE tracking via OSV.dev
2.3 Address unauthorized software ✅ Full MCP gateway denied_tools list
2.5 Allowlist authorized software ✅ Full McpAuthPolicy server allowlist
2.6 Allowlist authorized libraries 🟡 Partial SBOM generation (Tutorial 26), manual review

CIS Control 3: Data Protection

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
3.1 Establish and maintain a data management process ✅ Full data-provenance-model.md — provenance schema
3.2 Establish and maintain a data inventory 🟡 Partial Provenance records track data sources; no full inventory UI
3.3 Configure data access control lists ✅ Full Policy rules with condition matching on data classification
3.4 Enforce data retention ✅ Full record-retention-policy.md + AuditLog with configurable TTL
3.6 Encrypt data on end-user devices ✅ Full E2E encryption (Signal protocol) for agent-to-agent messaging
3.9 Encrypt data on removable media ⬜ N/A Agent systems don't use removable media
3.10 Encrypt sensitive data in transit ✅ Full E2E encryption + TLS enforcement in McpAuthPolicy
3.11 Encrypt sensitive data at rest 🟡 Partial Identity files encrypted at rest; audit logs depend on storage backend
3.12 Segment data processing and storage 🟡 Partial SessionState attribute ratchets enforce data classification boundaries

CIS Control 4: Secure Configuration of Enterprise Assets and Software

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
4.1 Establish and maintain a secure configuration process ✅ Full Policy-as-code in YAML with extends composition
4.2 Establish and maintain a secure configuration for network infrastructure 🟡 Partial McpAuthPolicy TLS enforcement; network config outside scope
4.7 Manage default accounts on enterprise assets ✅ Full No default accounts; all agents require explicit identity creation

CIS Control 5: Account Management

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
5.1 Establish and maintain an inventory of accounts ✅ Full AgentIdentity registry with DID inventory
5.2 Use unique passwords ✅ Full Ed25519 keypairs — no passwords, cryptographic identity
5.3 Disable dormant accounts ✅ Full AgentIdentity.suspend() / revoke()
5.4 Restrict administrator privileges ✅ Full Delegation chains with monotonic scope narrowing

CIS Control 6: Access Management

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
6.1 Establish an access granting process ✅ Full Policy rules with require_approval + ApprovalHandler
6.2 Establish an access revoking process ✅ Full Kill switch + AgentIdentity.revoke()
6.3 Require MFA for externally-exposed applications 🟡 Partial Trust handshake (challenge-response), not traditional MFA
6.5 Require MFA for administrative access 🟡 Partial Human sponsor model; MFA depends on IdP

CIS Control 7: Continuous Vulnerability Management

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
7.1 Establish and maintain a vulnerability management process ✅ Full McpCveFeed + Dependabot + CodeQL
7.2 Establish and maintain a remediation process ✅ Full incident-response-workflow.md
7.4 Perform automated application patch management 🟡 Partial Dependabot for deps; MCP server patching is external
7.7 Remediate detected vulnerabilities ✅ Full CVE severity → policy-gated blocking of vulnerable servers

CIS Control 8: Audit Log Management

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
8.1 Establish and maintain an audit log management process ✅ Full AuditLog with tamper-evident hash chaining
8.2 Collect audit logs ✅ Full AuditLog.log() for all governance events
8.3 Ensure adequate audit log storage ✅ Full record-retention-policy.md + configurable AuditSink
8.5 Collect detailed audit logs ✅ Full Policy decisions, approval outcomes, trust scores, OTel spans
8.9 Centralize audit logs ✅ Full OTel export to centralized backends (Azure Monitor, Splunk, etc.)
8.11 Conduct audit log reviews 🟡 Partial AuditLog.query() + OTel dashboards; no automated review

CIS Control 10: Malware Defenses

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
10.1 Deploy and maintain anti-malware software 🟡 Partial PromptInjectionDetector + advisory classifiers
10.7 Use behavior-based anti-malware software ✅ Full PatternAdvisory + CallbackAdvisory for anomaly detection

CIS Control 11: Data Recovery

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
11.1 Establish and maintain a data recovery process ⬜ Gap AGT does not manage backups; depends on infrastructure

CIS Control 13: Network Monitoring and Defense

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
13.1 Centralize security event alerting ✅ Full OTel metrics + agt.policy.denials alerts
13.6 Collect network traffic flow logs ⬜ Gap Network-level; outside AGT scope

CIS Control 14: Security Awareness and Skills Training

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
14.1 Establish and maintain a security awareness program ⬜ Gap Organizational responsibility; AGT provides 40+ tutorials
14.9 Conduct role-specific security awareness training 🟡 Partial Tutorials cover governance for developers; no formal training program

CIS Control 16: Application Software Security

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
16.1 Establish and maintain a secure application development process ✅ Full Policy-as-code, CI/CD with CodeQL + Gitleaks + fuzzing
16.4 Establish and maintain a secure coding standard ✅ Full .pre-commit-hooks.yaml, linting, OWASP mapping
16.9 Train developers in application security 🟡 Partial 40+ tutorials; no formal certification
16.12 Implement code-level security checks ✅ Full PromptInjectionDetector, McpSecurityScanner, advisory classifiers

CIS Control 17: Incident Response Management

Safeguard Description AGT Coverage Module
17.1 Designate personnel to manage incident handling ⬜ Gap Organizational responsibility
17.2 Establish and maintain contact information for reporting incidents 🟡 Partial SECURITY.md in repo; no integrated incident contact system
17.4 Establish and maintain an incident response process ✅ Full incident-response-workflow.md
17.8 Conduct post-incident reviews ✅ Full Post-mortem template in incident response workflow

Gap Analysis

# Gap Severity Recommendation
1 Data recovery (CIS 11.1) Medium Document backup procedures for audit logs and policy stores. AGT can recommend but not enforce backup.
2 Network traffic flow logs (CIS 13.6) Low Network-level concern; recommend AKS/infrastructure-layer monitoring.
3 Security awareness program (CIS 14.1) Medium AGT provides tutorials; organizations should build formal training around them.
4 Incident handling personnel (CIS 17.1) Medium Organizational responsibility; document in impact assessment template.

Related: NIST AI RMF Alignment · SOC 2 Mapping · OWASP Agentic Top 10 Architecture · EU AI Act Checklist