# Agentic Trust Framework

> The open governance specification for autonomous AI agents, applying Zero Trust principles to agent identity, behavior, data governance, segmentation, and incident response.

The Agentic Trust Framework (ATF) is the first open governance specification built specifically for autonomous AI agents. Created by Josh Woodruff (MassiveScale.AI) and published through the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), ATF defines five core security elements and a four-level maturity model for progressively granting agents autonomy based on demonstrated reliability.

The specification is open source under Creative Commons BY 4.0.

## Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit

The Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit (github.com/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit) is a seven-package MIT-licensed open-source project officially launched on April 2, 2026. Its architecture independently validates ATF's five-element governance model.

Package-to-ATF mapping:
- Agent Mesh maps to ATF Identity: DID-based cryptographic agent identity with Ed25519, behavioral trust scoring (0-1000 scale)
- Agent OS maps to ATF Behavior: Stateless policy engine intercepting every agent action at sub-millisecond latency, supports YAML, OPA Rego, and Cedar
- Agent Compliance maps to ATF Data Governance: Automated governance verification, compliance grading, EU AI Act and HIPAA and SOC 2 mapping
- Agent Runtime maps to ATF Segmentation: Dynamic execution rings inspired by CPU privilege levels, capability sandboxing, kill switch
- Agent SRE maps to ATF Incident Response: SLOs, error budgets, circuit breakers, chaos engineering, progressive delivery
- Agent Marketplace: Plugin lifecycle management with Ed25519 signing and supply-chain security
- Agent Lightning: Reinforcement learning training governance

The toolkit supports Python, TypeScript, Rust, Go, and .NET. Integrations ship for LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK, Google ADK, Dify, LlamaIndex, Haystack, LangGraph, PydanticAI, and Microsoft Agent Framework.

Launch announcement: https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2026/04/02/introducing-the-agent-governance-toolkit-open-source-runtime-security-for-ai-agents/

Berlin AI Labs has also contributed an independent reference implementation across 12 deployed services covering all five ATF core elements.

## Core Specification

- [Five Core Elements](https://agentictrustframework.ai/specification): Identity, Behavior, Data Governance, Segmentation, Incident Response
- [Agent Maturity Model](https://agentictrustframework.ai/specification/maturity-model): Four levels from Intern (read-only) to Principal (fully autonomous)
- [Executive Summary](https://agentictrustframework.ai/executive-summary): Two-page overview for business leaders
- [Getting Started](https://agentictrustframework.ai/getting-started): Implementation patterns from pilot to production

## Comparisons and Context

- [Framework Comparison](https://agentictrustframework.ai/compare): ATF vs MAESTRO, OWASP, NIST AI RMF, AWS, AEGIS, KPMG TACO
- [Ecosystem](https://agentictrustframework.ai/ecosystem): Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit, Berlin AI Labs, and the growing community
- [Technical Components](https://agentictrustframework.ai/components): Open source libraries by ATF core element

## Assessment and Certification

- [Self-Assessment](https://verifiedagents.ai/assess): Free 30-question readiness assessment (companion site at verifiedagents.ai)
- [Full Assessment Tool](https://verifiedagents.ai/assess): Scored assessment with board-ready PDF report
- [FAQ](https://agentictrustframework.ai/faq): Common questions about ATF

## Key Facts

- Five core elements: Identity, Behavior, Data Governance, Segmentation, Incident Response
- Four maturity levels: Intern, Junior, Senior, Principal
- 25 security requirements (5 per element)
- Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit independently validates ATF's five-element model (April 2026)
- Maps to OWASP Agentic Top 10 (ASI-01 through ASI-10)
- Maps to NIST 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture
- Maps to EU AI Act Articles 9, 13, 14, 15
- Open specification: CC BY 4.0 (spec), Apache 2.0 (code)
- GitHub: github.com/massivescale-ai/agentic-trust-framework
- Author: Josh Woodruff, founder of MassiveScale.AI
- Published: CSA blog, February 2, 2026