ServiceNow Introduces AI Passport for Enhanced AI Agent Governance
ServiceNow's new AI Passport solution provides enterprises with runtime control over AI agent actions, aiming to ensure production readiness through a robust governance framework.
ServiceNow has unveiled AI Passport, a novel authority layer designed to give enterprises granular runtime control over the actions of AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers within complex multi-agent workflows. This initiative aims to bolster the production readiness of AI agents by integrating runtime governance, platform integration, and comprehensive oversight into ServiceNow's operational AI harness.
The core of AI Passport is its function as a cryptographically signed credential. AI agents reference this passport at runtime, including within environments like NVIDIA OpenShell, to verify their authorized scope. This scope is grounded in the enterprise's specific business context, ensuring that AI decisions are governed and aligned with organizational policies. When an AI agent operates within its designated passport boundaries, it can function freely. However, if an agent deviates, graduated responses can be enforced, ranging from redirection and restriction to immediate termination via kill switch capabilities, all executed at machine speed.
This new solution addresses a critical gap in the deployment of AI agents, moving beyond mere visibility to provide actionable control. "As AI agents proliferate across the enterprise, visibility alone isn’t enough. Enterprises need confidence that every AI agent is operating within its authorized scope," stated Jon Sigler, EVP and GM, AI Platform at ServiceNow. "ServiceNow closes that gap with an operational harness across AI Passport and new capabilities that unify agent authority, governance, and operational oversight so enterprises can scale agentic AI with control."
AI Passport is built upon open specifications, allowing any governance product, identity provider, or enforcement point to issue and verify credentials for both internal and third-party AI agents. This interoperability ensures that credentials can be verified at every stage of multi-agent workflows. This represents a proactive approach to AI security, shifting from post-incident analysis to prevention by authorizing AI actions at runtime, embodying ServiceNow's 'Shift Zero' philosophy of being secure by design from inception.
Each AI agent receives its own AI Passport, issued by ServiceNow's Super Intelligence Control Tower. This passport is informed by the enterprise's live business context, drawing data from ServiceNow's Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) policies, and workflow approvals. This provides a verifiable permissions record, particularly crucial for third-party agents, rather than relying solely on the agents' self-reported capabilities.
ServiceNow is collaborating with NVIDIA as a design and launch partner. This partnership involves building a production-ready enforcement implementation using the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, which incorporates NVIDIA OpenShell secure runtime software and the NVIDIA Sentry security framework. "As enterprises shift from experimenting with agents to running them in production, securing those agents demands enforcement at the infrastructure layer," noted Itay Ozery, director of Product Marketing for Networking and Cybersecurity at NVIDIA. "By implementing AI Passport with the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, ServiceNow customers can continuously verify and enforce what every agent is authorized to do — at machine speed and at runtime."
Beyond AI Passport, ServiceNow is enhancing its end-to-end AI governance capabilities across discovery, visibility, control, measurement, and compliance. New features include shadow AI detection to identify unapproved AI agents, over 400 out-of-box connectors for broad AI discovery, access mapping to ground authorization decisions in entitlements, and continuous AI observability. The platform also introduces cost governance to track spending and value intelligence to connect consumption with business value, integrating AI cost management into IT Asset Management (ITAM) for a unified view of various AI-related expenses.
These advancements are particularly critical for highly regulated industries, such as financial institutions, where ungoverned AI assets pose significant risks. By providing a unified platform for AI governance, ServiceNow aims to enable enterprises to deploy AI agents securely and confidently, ensuring accountability and compliance in an increasingly complex AI landscape.