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The Agent Baseline: 35 Controls, But Where Should You Start?

Snyk expands on the 'Agent Baseline' (co-authored with Docker and Keycard), a vendor-agnostic reference architecture defining six security outcomes for AI agents — Discover, Constrain, Authorize, Observe, Validate, Respond — and 35 specific controls (e.g. CON-03/04, DIS-04/06/07, AUT-01/02/03, OBS-02, RES-01/02/04, VAL-03/04). The post argues coverage isn't a rollout plan and gives sequencing per use case: developer coding agents should start with sandboxing/capability scoping (Constrain) then discovery, shared internal agents should start with per-principal Authorize controls to avoid confused-deputy failures from shared service accounts, and production agents should prioritize Respond (credential/session revocation, component quarantine, non-agent fallback paths) and outcome validation before finality. It also flags gaps in the current draft (no maturity model, use-case lens not yet in v1.0) and notes the Baseline is open for public comment on GitHub until Sept 30.