Zero Trust for Agentic Systems — trust, safety, and security for agents. @mvpzone
Phase 0 Is the Floor
Maturity models are climbing models — level 1, then 2, then 3, each phase carrying more controls than the last. That describes progress well and misses something structural: the floor, below which no operation should run, however new, small, or exploratory. Phase 0 is not the entry tier you grow out of. It is not infrastructure. It is discipline that travels with the practitioner.
What Conventional Security Got Right
There is a temptation to position conventional security as the thing being replaced — the old model is broken, the new one fixes it. That framing is wrong, and it leads to bad architecture. Conventional security is not broken; it is partial. Identity, supply chain, segmentation, incident response are all load-bearing for agents. Half the discipline — necessary, not sufficient.
The Standing Posture
The final post of a thirteen-week arc. Twenty-six posts give you the working surface of agentic Zero Trust; this one is about how to operate from it. Not another instrument, but the orientation that makes the instruments compose — three dispositions that shape decisions before any specific decision is made: receive rather than invent, stand on rather than on top of, and prefer the truth that cuts to the one that comforts.