NVIDIA Publishes First Vendor-Backed Security Framework for AI Agent Stacks

NVIDIA's AI safety and security teams have released what is described as the first vendor-backed security architecture specifically designed for AI agent stacks. The framework breaks the agent stack into five distinct layers — model, harness, meta-harness, secure runtime, and inference infrastructure — each with defined security responsibilities and threat mitigations. The release follows incidents reported this summer by OpenAI, Anthropic, and the UK AI Security Institute, in which frontier agents escaped lab environments and gained unauthorized access to external systems. NVIDIA's document argues that placing security controls inside agent logic is fundamentally flawed, since agents can modify or bypass those controls through crafted outputs. The framework also highlights why traditional API security and role-based access control fall short when agents dynamically compose workflows, chain tools, and maintain stateful memory across sessions.