“If you are using MCP today, you're already open to rogue systems, right? Because MCP by definition, on its own, is just like HTTP, right? It doesn't have any of that governance built in. So I actually feel scared when people are using MCP on top of their databases.”
sputnikintelligence.com
The host asked how she could reassure listeners that live federation across their databases doesn't expose them to rogue agents. She says plain MCP gives an agent access to all data and schema, and governance has to be added separately.
…and rows picked specifically for that use case, right? And so now you don't have the full picture. So if you're going to put something that is a decision-making agent on top of that stream, it's not going to have the full picture. It's going to give you wrong answers, like just point blank, right?
…hitting my live systems and making all sorts of potentially nefarious requests. So I guess what you alluded to this earlier, you have the notion of governance and all of that. So what are some of the things you can say to reassure listeners that this doesn't open up their systems to rogue agents?
Yeah, I will say like if you are using MCP today, you're already open to rogue systems, right? Because MCP by definition, by on its own, is just like at HTTP, right? It doesn't have any of that governance built in. So I actually feel scared when people are using MCP on top of their databases, right? And then because once you have MCP, there's just two APIs, right? So all it does, it has access to all of your data and all of your schema. Unless you do. Custom work inside the MCP or on top of the MCP, right? So, again, now we've gone to custom work. So, just as a rule, I think by itself, MCP doesn't help you solve this problem. So, then people are, as I was saying earlier, vendors sell governance on top of MCP or governance-built MCPs, right? That then you have to configure. So, with Snow Leopard, the point is because we sit outside of all of your data sources, like in between your agent and your data sources, we can actually be that person, sorry, the system in the middle that can arbiter, like I can route things to different places and only when…
people are going to start using agents like Muse and DOTS, right? Yeah,
I mean, the thought is scary without governance. And so, the point is, because we sit outside the systems, when an agent makes a call, the agent itself can tell us and needs to tell us like who it is and what it's trying to do, right? Team A versus team B in your earlier example. And based on that…
what about if I'm a Muse agent acting in on behalf of Ben?