# Out-of-band Policy Engine: governance AI agents can't ignore

DevFeed: [Out-of-band Policy Engine: governance AI agents can't ignore](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/out-of-band-policy-engine-governance-ai-agents-can-t-ignore-12668.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.redpanda.com/blog/agentic-ai-needs-out-of-band-governance>)

Author: Tyler Akidau

Published: 2026-08-03T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Redpanda](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/redpanda.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [shadow AI](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/shadow-ai.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [audit trail](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/audit-trail.md>), [Language models](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/language-models.md>)

Tags: [agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agents.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-agents.md>), [announcement](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/announcement.md>), [audit-trail](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/audit-trail.md>), [governance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/governance.md>), [mcp](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mcp.md>), [mcp-server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mcp-server.md>), [policy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/policy.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [shadow-ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/shadow-ai.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that enterprises need out-of-band governance for AI agents because agents can create shadow AI and may alter safeguards or audit trails that they can access. It presents Redpanda's Out-of-Band Policy Engine and Agentic Data Plane as an approach in which policies remain outside the agent's reach.

## Source excerpt

Somewhere in your company, right now, someone is building an agent. Here's how the latest release of Redpanda's Agentic Data Plane makes it safe to run them.