Govern AI agent tool access with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway

In recent discussions with customers, a recurring concern has been understanding and controlling which AI agents have access to sensitive organizational resources, who authorized such access, and what risks are involved if credentials are leaked. Without centralized governance, organizations face challenges in visibility and risk management.

Amazon Bedrock's AgentCore Gateway addresses these issues by providing a secure, scalable platform for building, connecting, and managing AI agents across enterprise environments. It leverages the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and integrates with Amazon Bedrock Guardrails, AWS Agent Registry, and other self-hosted solutions to enforce security policies, scrub sensitive data, and maintain comprehensive audit logs.

The approach is structured into four progressive scopes: Connect, Control, Catalog, and Harden. Starting with a minimal setup that enables basic access control, organizations can incrementally add identity-aware authorization, tool discovery, and enterprise-wide hardening measures as their governance needs evolve.

For implementation, the process begins with establishing a gateway using Amazon Cognito for authentication, registering low-risk tools, and gradually expanding to include detailed policy enforcement, user identity management, and comprehensive audit capabilities. The platform supports both managed and self-hosted components, allowing flexibility based on organizational requirements.

Cost considerations are addressed through native rate limiting and response caching, with typical expenses for small-scale deployments estimated at around $17 per month for Gateway and Policy services. Proper resource cleanup is recommended to avoid ongoing charges.

Governance is an ongoing process, with recommended quarterly reviews of logs and policies, and continuous adjustments to maintain security and operational efficiency. Amazon Bedrock's AgentCore Gateway provides a robust foundation for organizations to scale their agentic AI initiatives securely and responsibly.