5 Learnings from the First-Ever Gartner Market Guide for Guardian Agents

This article shares five key learnings from Gartner's inaugural Market Guide for Guardian Agents, a new category of technology that supervises AI agents to ensure their actions align with goals and governance policies.

• •Nearly 70% of enterprises already run AI agents in production, but fast adoption is outpacing traditional governance controls, creating "identity dark matter" risks such as orphaned accounts, never-expiring tokens, and excessive privileges
• •Guardian Agents must cover three core capability areas: AI Visibility and Traceability, Continuous Assurance and Evaluation, and Runtime Inspection and Enforcement
• •Gartner outlines six vendor delivery approaches: Standalone Oversight Platforms, AI/MCP Gateways, Embedded Run-Time Modules, Orchestration Layer Extensions, Hybrid Edge-Cloud Models, and Coordination Mechanisms, each with distinct trade-offs
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