Guardian agents are here and ready to disrupt the market

Like the guardian angel who might have saved you from that head-on collision last week, AI agents may have a powerful protector that prevents things from spinning out of control.

“Guardian agents,” a term coined by Gartner, are a mix of AI governance and runtime controls that secure agentic activity. These capabilities help bolster trust in agents while protecting them from security risks, according to Avivah Litan, a distinguished VP analyst for Gartner Research.

“They make sure that the agents stay on track, do what they’re told, are not hijacked by bad actors, [and] are constrained in their agency,” she said. If you are a company embracing AI agents, you need guardian agents, she added.

Ready or not, here they come. Litan told IT Brew that guardian agents are expected to be very “disruptive” for existing security vendors. By 2029, Gartner predicts guardian agents will lead more than 70% of companies to no longer need about half of the “incumbent risk and security systems protecting AI agent activities.”

While Litan said the market of traditional security players building and offering their own guardian agents is largely underdeveloped, those companies already embarking on this journey are ripe targets for acquisition.

“If you look at CrowdStrike acquisitions and Palo Alto and Check Point, they’re all buying vendors in AI security that are moving into AI guardian agents,” Litan said.

Guardian vs. guardian. Ironically, guardian agents also need their own guardians. Gartner said it’s essential for organizations to have “robust metagovernance controls” to prevent security breaches and risks stemming from the protector agents. This includes real-time monitoring and maintaining “immutable, timestamped logs” of guardian agents.

“Without such independent safeguards, supervisory agents could inadvertently introduce new errors, vulnerabilities, or compliance challenges,” Litan and other analysts wrote in a February market guide for guardian agents.

Slow and steady doesn’t win this race. Gartner claims businesses spend less than 1% of their agentic AI budget on guardian agents today. The research firm expects this number to rise to 5%–7% by 2028. Litan said it is crucial for organizations to be open to changing their processes to incorporate guardian agents into their agentic workflows, even if it means appointing an AI leader to get on track.

“This is already hitting them,” Litan said. “So, they gotta get organized.”