Glossary / MCP Governance

Definition

What is MCP Governance?

Model Context Protocol governance

MCP governance is the practice of controlling what AI agents can do through the Model Context Protocol. A transparent proxy sits between agents and their MCP tools, evaluating every tool call against your policy in under 400ms and returning a pass, correct, or block verdict — with allow/block lists, argument constraints, and a full audit trail.

The Model Context Protocol lets an LLM call real tools — query databases, write files, hit APIs. Out of the box there is nothing between the model and your production systems. MCP governance closes that gap with a transparent proxy you point your agents at instead of the upstream server, so adoption requires no code changes.

Beyond static allow/block lists, MCP governance can route high-risk calls through a Guardian for a second opinion, detect multi-step attack sequences within a session, and record every call, verdict, and correction in a tamper-evident ledger for SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.