Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

A natural-language decision can now trigger a real API call, query sensitive data, deploy code, or modify infrastructure. MCP expands the security boundary beyond the connection to the identities, privileges, tools, credentials, and downstream systems behind each action. That challenge is growing with adoption. Anthropic reported more than 10,000 active public MCP servers by December 2025, alongside 97M+ monthly downloads of its Python and TypeScript MCP SDKs.

An old package or a misconfigured cloud storage bucket can be identified by a legacy scanner, but it does not account for the unique risk profile of autonomous systems. It cannot confirm that an AI agent with access to your production environment can chain together a CRM read, an email send and a production write using inherited credentials. Your agents are dynamic: they plan, call tools, and act across multiple environments, and some may retain context or long-term memory beyond the original request.

Security teams have spent years building visibility into unsanctioned SaaS apps, cloud services, and other forms of shadow IT. But shadow AI raises the bar. Discovering an unsanctioned AI app or autonomous agent is only the beginning. Teams also need to determine which identities it authenticates with, what credentials and permissions it relies on, what data it can access, which systems it integrates with, and what downstream actions it performs. The scale of the challenge is already becoming apparent.