Trust in Depth: Giving agents more autonomy without losing control
AWS introduces 'Trust in Depth' layered framework for enterprise AI agent autonomy and control
“Trust comes from independent layers that reinforce one another, the same layered discipline the industry has practiced for two decades as Defense in Depth, turned to a new purpose.”
AWS has formalized a governance framework called 'Trust in Depth' that applies layered security principles to AI agent oversight, addressing the core enterprise tension between agent autonomy and control. The framework structures trust-building across four lifecycle phases: scope (pre-run), identity (deployment), bounds (runtime), and observability (post-run). It leverages AWS's decade-plus investment in automated reasoning to mathematically verify agent constraints, positioning this as a scalable alternative to human-in-the-loop review that breaks down at scale.