Policy in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore lets developers set up and enforce security controls for how AI agents interact with tools, creating a secure boundary around agent activities. AI agents can adapt to handle a range of tasks, from answering customer questions to automating workflows across multiple tools and systems, but this flexibility can also introduce new security risks as agents might misunderstand business rules or exceed their intended limits.
In AgentCore, developers can build policy engines. These are software components that automatically enforce rules. Developers store explicit policies in these engines and connect them to gateways, which control and monitor the flow of requests. The system checks all agent traffic passing through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore gateways. It ensures each request complies with the defined policies before agents can access tools.
Policies are written in Cedar, an open-source language for creating and enforcing authorization rules. This helps developers clearly define what agents can access and what actions they can take. Policy in AgentCore also lets developers write policies in plain English, so they do not have to use Cedar. The system deciphers these natural-language rules, generates possible policies, checks them against the tools set up, and uses automated checks to spot overly broad, overly strict, or impossible-to-make rules. This helps customers find and fix problems before policies are enforced.
Policy in AgentCore provides detailed rights based on user identity and tool inputs, making it safer to use autonomous agents at scale by handling security outside the agency’s code. Developers can focus on building new features while maintaining strong security. This removes the need for custom security work and lowers the risk of agents bypassing policies.
Key Benefits
PolAgentCore policy delivers three main benefits for secure, scalable AI agent deployment. Fine-grained Control: Define the actions agents can take, the tools they can use, and the conditions under which they can use them.
- Deterministic Enforcement: Consistently enforce policies outside agent code for reliable security. Accessible Authoring: Create policies in English or Cedar for broad team adoption.EnfAll enforcement decisions are logged in CloudWatch for compliance purposes.
Key Features
Policy in AgentCore provides a full set of tools to manage agent interactions with policies. Main features include:
- Policy enforcement: the system checks all agent requests against set policies before granting access to tools.
- Access Controls: allow detailed permissions driven by user identity and tool input.
- Policy authoring: Write clear, validated policies in Cedar. You can also create policies in plain English, which the system translates and checks.
- Policy Monitoring integrates with Amazon CloudWatch (a monitoring service that collects and tracks metrics) to observe policy checks and decisions.
- Structure collaboration works with VPC security groups and other AWS security tools.
- Audit Logging keeps comprehensive logs of policy decisions for compliance and troubleshooting.
Source: Policy in Amazon Bedrock AgentCore: Control Agent-to-Tool Interactions
