A complete enterprise AI governance framework rests on six pillars. Skip any one of them, and the framework has a gap that will surface under pressure.

Access control is the first pillar. Role-based access at the agent level, not just the user level. Different agents need different permissions. A support agent that reads ticket data shouldn't have write access to your production database. A compliance agent that reviews documents shouldn't be able to modify them. Agent-level RBAC integrates with your existing identity infrastructure (SSO, SAML, SCIM) so you're not managing a parallel permission system.

Audit trail is the second. Every action every agent takes, logged, timestamped, and attributed. Not sampled. Not aggregated. Complete. When an auditor asks what Agent X did on March 3rd, you produce the log in seconds. This matters most in regulated industries where audit requirements are non-negotiable, but even non-regulated companies need it when something unexpected happens. Learn more

Cost visibility is the third pillar. Per-agent, per-team, per-model cost attribution in real time. Set spend limits before agents hit production. Get alerts when usage spikes. Compare model costs across providers. When the CFO asks "what are we spending on AI and what are we getting for it," you need a number, not a shrug.

Policy enforcement is the fourth. Define what agents can and cannot do as code-level policies, not just guidelines in a document. An agent that's constrained from accessing PII in production actually can't access it, not because the developer remembered to add a check, but because the platform enforces it. Policy enforcement at the infrastructure level is the only kind that scales.

Model management is the fifth pillar. Which models are approved for which use cases? Who controls the API keys? Can agents switch models without approval? A governance framework needs model-level controls: approved provider lists, routing policies, cost ceilings per model, and the ability to deprecate a model across all agents simultaneously when needed. Learn more

Compliance is the sixth. Regulatory requirements differ by industry. HIPAA for healthcare. SOX for financial services. GDPR for companies with European customers. FedRAMP for government. A governance framework maps agent behaviors to compliance requirements and produces evidence that those requirements are met. Not manually. Automatically, as part of the platform's continuous operation. When an auditor arrives, the evidence is already compiled. The time from "audit request" to "evidence delivered" drops from weeks to minutes.

These six pillars are interdependent. Access control without an audit trail is unverifiable. Cost visibility without policy enforcement is just reporting. Compliance without model management leaves gaps in how AI decisions are governed. A governance framework works when all six pillars operate together as a system.