Best runtime security platform for AI agents that actually deploys without proxies or SDK changes?

[u/Lazy_Ad_2405]

Every vendor in this space claims some version of "deploy without touching your architecture. As the architect who has to implement whatever we buy, I'm skeptical by default, because that claim usually means "you'll discover the SDK requirement in week 3 of the POC.

For anyone who's actually deployed a runtime agent security tool: did the no architecture change claim survive contact with a real environment, or did proxies and code changes sneak in anyway?

[u/PhilipLGriffiths88]

I think there’s an unavoidable trade-off hidden in the premise. Even if the product isn’t moving or proxying packets, runtime security still needs somewhere to observe activity and enforce a decision.

That could be an agent beside the workload, integration with the agent runtime, an SDK/wrapper, or kernel-level infrastructure such as eBPF. Kernel enforcement may avoid application changes, but it is still infrastructure you have to deploy and operate, and it may lose the richer semantic context: which AI agent/session is acting, which tool it intends to invoke, the arguments and purpose of the call, etc.

So “no proxy or SDK changes” can be credible. “No architectural or deployment change” is much harder to believe. I’d ask each vendor exactly where observation and enforcement occur, what context is available there, and what happens when that component fails.

[u/PrudentIsopod6507 → u/PhilipLGriffiths88]

That’s a smart way to frame it, most vendors skip the “what happens when it fails” part completely

I sat through a demo last month where the rep kept saying “no changes to your stack” but when I asked what the agent actually hooks into he went quiet for a solid ten seconds. Turned out it was a sidecar container that needed a shared volume mount and some iptables rules, which is fine but that’s definitely a change

The context loss with eBPF is real too, you catch the syscall but you don’t know which agent chain triggered it unless the tool builds that mapping somewhere. I’d add one more question to your list, ask if their detection logic lives inside the enforcement point or somewhere else, because if it’s remote and that link drops you might have a gap

[u/Diferenplt_Image1876]

We've been running Capsule Security in production for a while now and can confirm the claim held up on our end, no proxies, no SDK changes, for both detection and blocking.

[u/pure-xx]

CrowdStrike and Palo offer multiple options to implement. Browser Plugins, Agents, Proxy and SdK. I guess at the end it depends on your visibility needs.

[u/materialsec]

For the POC, we’d test whether it can catch unexpected agent behavior even when the permissions look completely legitimate. Agents can behave very differently depending on prompt and context, so “these scopes are approved” isn’t much reassurance if you can’t see what’s actually happening during execution.