Organizations face risks from unvetted MCP servers, A2A agents, and Skills: inadvertent access to sensitive data systems, compliance violations under SOX and GDPR frameworks that can result in regulatory penalties, and operational disruptions when vulnerable tools or malicious agents are discovered post-deployment. Security teams report that manual review processes can add several weeks to each AI application deployment, creating a backlog that grows as AI adoption accelerates. Audit failures from incomplete tool and agent tracking create regulatory exposure that compliance teams struggle to quantify.

The Cisco and AWS partnership addresses three challenges enterprises face when scaling AI agents: visibility gaps, security bottlenecks, and compliance risks. In this post, we explore how you can overcome AI security challenges through automated scanning and unified governance.

Through strategic collaboration, AWS and Cisco AI Defense provide comprehensive, automated security scanning for every MCP server, AI agent, and Agent Skill in the enterprise. AI Registry, an AWS-backed open-source project, integrates with Cisco AI Defense to bring:

Organizations deploying MCP servers and AI agents face a fundamental visibility challenge. Teams often add servers and agents ad-hoc across cloud and on-premises infrastructure, making it nearly impossible for security teams to maintain oversight. With dozens or even hundreds of tools and agents running without centralized governance, organizations lose visibility into what tools are available, which agents are communicating with each other, who’s using them, and whether they pose security risks.

The AI Registry solves this through unified registration and discovery. Every MCP server, AI agent and Skill is registered in a single control plane, providing complete visibility. Beyond visibility, Cisco AI Defense integration provides added protection.