What is an AI agent registry?
By Identra · Updated
An AI agent registry is a catalog of AI agents and their capabilities, ownership, and deployment details. For enterprise security, it should connect each agent to its approved purpose, identities, and access so teams can review, investigate, and retire it.
Key numbers
- 82% of enterprises have unknown AI agents running in their IT infrastructure (Cloud Security Alliance survey commissioned by Token Security, 2026)
- Only 21% of organizations maintain a real-time inventory of active AI agents (CSA Securing Autonomous AI Agents report, commissioned by Strata Identity, 2026)
- 65% of organizations experienced an AI agent-related incident in the past 12 months (Cloud Security Alliance survey commissioned by Token Security, 2026)
Why do enterprises need an AI agent registry?
Agents can appear in SaaS applications, developer environments, internal services, and employee workflows. Without a maintained inventory, security teams may struggle to find the owner of an agent or explain why it can reach sensitive data. A registry gives those questions a shared starting point.
A useful registry supports AI governance by connecting technical deployments to business accountability. It helps reviewers distinguish an approved experiment from a production agent and identify agents whose purpose or sponsorship has expired. It can also help developers find existing capabilities before creating duplicates.
Registration does not establish safety or prove complete coverage. Treat the catalog as a record to verify against deployed systems. An unregistered agent needs investigation, while a registered agent still needs access controls and monitoring.
What should an agent registry contain?
Start with a stable identifier and enough context to answer who owns the agent, where it runs, and what it is allowed to do. Distinguish an agent definition from its deployments and individual runs. A development deployment may have different permissions from the production version.
Record the AI agent identity relationships explicitly. An agent may use a dedicated workload identity, a shared service account, delegated user access, or a combination. A catalog entry alone does not create a distinct authentication identity.
- Purpose and accountability: business use, responsible team, named owner, and escalation contact.
- Deployment details: platform, environment, version, endpoint where applicable, and lifecycle status.
- Access relationships: identity references, delegated authority, permitted resources, and sensitive data categories.
- Dependencies: connected tools, APIs, MCP servers, and other agents it can call.
- Review evidence: approval scope, restrictions, reviewer, last verification, and next review trigger.
- Retirement instructions: how to stop execution, remove access, and preserve investigation records.
How does an agent registry work?
Teams submit metadata through deployment workflows, administrative interfaces, or APIs. Some implementations also import records from supported platforms. For example, Google's documentation describes a registry that catalogs agents, MCP servers, and tools. Exact coverage and registration methods depend on the implementation. Google Cloud Agent Registry API documentation
For an enterprise governance workflow, registration should lead to review of the requested purpose and access. Keep discovery status separate from approval status. Finding an agent does not mean it is approved, and making an entry searchable should not automatically grant permission to invoke it.
Keep declared permissions separate from verified permissions. Compare the entry with identity grants and deployment configuration, then investigate differences. Changes to tools, ownership, data access, or agent delegation should trigger review when they expand authority. Record when and how each important field was verified so readers can judge whether it is current.
How is an agent registry different from other inventories?
These systems overlap, and an organization can extend an existing catalog instead of creating a separate database. The useful distinction is the questions each record answers. Link records through stable identifiers to avoid conflicting ownership and access information.
Agent registry
- Primary focus
- Agent purpose, capabilities, deployments, and ownership
- Useful connection to an agent
- Connects the agent to approvals and access relationships
Model registry
- Primary focus
- Model versions and associated artifacts
- Useful connection to an agent
- Identifies the model used by a deployment
Identity inventory
- Primary focus
- Accounts, principals, credentials, and grants
- Useful connection to an agent
- Shows which identities provide the agent's authority
Asset inventory or CMDB
- Primary focus
- Applications, infrastructure, and service relationships
- Useful connection to an agent
- Identifies where the agent runs and who operates it
MCP server catalog
- Primary focus
- Servers and their available tools
- Useful connection to an agent
- Identifies tool providers the agent may use
What does an agent registry look like in an enterprise?
Consider a procurement agent that reads vendor contracts and drafts purchase requests. Its registry entry names the procurement owner, production deployment, contract repository, and identity used to access the purchasing system. Its approved scope allows drafting requests but requires a person to approve submission.
A developer later adds a tool that can change supplier payment details. That change expands the agent's authority and should trigger an access review before production use. The registry gives the reviewer the original purpose and approval boundary, while the purchasing system must enforce the actual permissions.
If the procurement owner leaves, the entry helps route an ownership review. The team can assign a replacement or retire the agent and revoke its access. Deleting the catalog entry alone would leave its credentials and scheduled execution untouched.
What does a secure agent registry practice look like?
Make registration part of deployment, then reconcile it with operational evidence. The goal is an inventory people can use during an access review or incident without guessing which fields are accurate.
A registry supports least privilege and the non-human identity lifecycle, but enforcement belongs in the systems that authorize and execute actions. A listed agent can still encounter malicious instructions, misuse permitted access, or operate with outdated grants.
- Define coverage. Include internally built agents and relevant agents enabled inside purchased applications. Mark ownership or access details that remain unverified.
- Require an owner and bounded purpose before production approval. Document exceptions with a responsible reviewer.
- Store references to managed secrets, never raw passwords, API keys, or bearer tokens in registry records.
- Restrict who can publish or change entries. Log edits to ownership, endpoints, dependencies, and approval status.
- Compare registered access with deployed grants after material changes. Track unexplained differences through resolution.
- Connect entries to runtime records so responders can identify affected deployments, users, and resources.
- Test retirement. Stop scheduled execution, revoke dedicated access, review shared dependencies, and retain historical records.
How Identra thinks about it
Identra gives teams discovery evidence to check a registry against. It finds AI agents and their owners across Microsoft 365 Copilot and Foundry, Google Workspace, and Anthropic, plus coding agents, MCP servers, and agent tasks on managed macOS and Windows devices. Comparing those findings with registered entries helps surface unregistered agents and missing owners.
Go deeper: AI security, built on identity
Frequently asked questions
Does every agent need its own identity?
A registry does not require a dedicated identity for every agent. Dedicated identities can make permissions and attribution clearer, but the entry should accurately describe any shared accounts or delegated user access.
Can an agent registry block an unsafe action?
A catalog alone cannot block execution. Registry approvals can inform enforcement, but the connected platform, authorization service, or runtime control must actually deny the action.
Should temporary agents be registered?
Keep temporary execution traceable to an approved agent definition, owner, and authority. Individual runs can live in execution logs rather than becoming separate permanent catalog entries.
Who should own the registry?
Assign an operational owner, such as platform engineering, and have security and identity teams define review requirements. Each agent also needs a business or technical owner accountable for its continued use.
How do you know whether the registry is complete?
Compare it with deployment platforms, identity grants, application inventories, and runtime records. Document coverage gaps and investigate unmatched activity instead of assuming that registration captures every agent.