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For an OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications assessment, document how the system is built, what it can do, which identities and tools it uses, how it handles memory and communication, and where people review or approve its actions. OWASP does not prescribe one universal signatory. A practical local approach is for the accountable system or business owner to accept residual risk, with security review and other specialists involved when the system’s data or impact warrants it.
What the 2026 OWASP Top 10 covers
The OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications for 2026 is a risk framework for autonomous and agentic AI systems. OWASP dates the publication December 9, 2025, and describes it as a starting point for identifying and mitigating security risks. OWASP says more than 100 experts, researchers, and practitioners contributed; that is a contributor count, not a measure of security effectiveness.
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Treat the Top 10 as a risk taxonomy, not a certification, compliance attestation, or guarantee that a system is secure. OWASP’s broader work also includes governance and practical security guidance, threat-and-mitigation material, and a reference application. Those resources are related, but they are not all the Top 10 itself.
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The OWASP Secure Agent Playbook provides useful assessment inputs and architecture-mapping questions. It calls out architecture documentation or source code; system prompts and instructions; tool definitions and MCP/A2A configurations; memory configuration; inter-agent communication protocols; and human oversight and approval workflows. Use those inputs to build a record that reflects your actual system.
#1 Best Overall
System, purpose, and architecture
- Record the system name, intended purpose, accountable owners, affected workflows, and the business or operational context in which it will run.
- Describe whether the design is a single agent, a multi-agent system, or a cluster, and identify the relevant components and their relationships.
- Keep architecture documentation or the relevant source code available as supporting evidence. Note the version or deployment being assessed so findings can be tied to the right system.
Autonomy and action boundaries
- State whether the agent acts autonomously, uses human-in-the-loop review, or must receive approval before specified actions.
- List the actions it can take and distinguish actions that only read information from those that can change data, execute work, or affect a workflow.
- Describe where approval occurs, what it covers, and whether any route could bypass it. The assessment should show the system’s real boundaries, not just its intended operating procedure.
Tools, identities, and access
- Inventory tool definitions and integrations, including MCP or A2A configurations where used. Identify which tools are available to which agents and what each can do.
- Record the service identities and credential scope used by the agent, along with the permissions attached to them. Identify read-only and write-capable access separately.
- Document controls such as explicit allow rules, scoped and short-lived tokens, and restrictions that keep agents out of administrative roles when those controls apply to the design.
Prompts, untrusted content, memory, and communication
- Retain the system prompts and agent instructions relevant to the assessed version. Identify sources of untrusted content that could influence agent behavior.
- Describe memory and state configuration, including vector databases or conversation history where applicable, and how state is persisted or shared.
- Record inter-agent communication protocols and identify agents or services that can delegate work. Explain which components can pass instructions or authority onward.
Findings, evidence, and remediation
For each applicable risk, make the assessment useful to someone who must decide whether the system can operate and under what conditions. Record the affected component, a plausible risk scenario, existing controls, supporting evidence, gaps, a responsible owner, and proposed remediation. These are sensible fields for a working risk record; the playbook’s visible inputs and prompts do not establish one mandatory report template.
Oversight and approval evidence
Document where human review takes place, what information the reviewer sees, which actions require approval, and how decisions are logged. If the design supports an emergency stop or revocation, record how it works and who can invoke it. Link the oversight description to the actual workflow and evidence, rather than relying on a general statement that a human is “in the loop.”
Who should approve the assessment?
The reviewed OWASP material treats human oversight and approval workflows as assessment inputs, but it does not name a required signer or role. It does not require a CISO, developer, product owner, or board member to sign off. Choose an approval model through your organization’s governance process rather than presenting it as an OWASP rule.
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- Accountable system or business owner: accepts the residual risk and the operational use of the system.
- Security reviewer: reviews technical findings, access controls, threat scenarios, and evidence.
- Additional reviewers as needed: involve privacy, legal, compliance, safety, or model-risk owners when the system’s data, deployment, or potential impact calls for their input.
Record each approver’s role, decision, date, assessment scope, unresolved risks, any conditions on use, and the event or date that will trigger another review. This is a governance recommendation, not an OWASP-mandated sign-off format. An approver should be able to see the findings and conditions they are accepting, not simply endorse a title or checklist.
How to connect security controls to evidence
OWASP DevSecOps guidance gives concrete implementation examples that can support an assessment. Map each example to the architecture and evidence in front of you; do not treat every example as a field explicitly required by the Top 10.
- Attribution and revocation: give an agent its own identity, such as a service account, GitHub App, or bot user, rather than reusing a person’s credentials. This can make activity attributable and access independently revocable.
- Limited authority: use scoped, short-lived tokens, avoid administrative roles for agents, and separate read-only from write-capable identities where the system supports that separation.
- Explicit tool access: start tool permissions from deny and add explicit allow rules for the actions the agent needs.
- Isolation: assess the boundaries around tools and execution. Permission prompts alone are not a security boundary against a manipulated agent.
For each control you rely on, retain evidence that shows what is configured and where it applies—for example, the relevant identity and permission configuration, tool definitions, or approval workflow. A control description without evidence makes it harder to judge whether the protection is present in the assessed deployment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which risks should the assessment consider?
OWASP’s announcement gives Agent Behavior Hijacking, Tool Misuse and Exploitation, and Identity and Privilege Abuse as examples. OWASP DevSecOps guidance also names Agent Goal Hijack (ASI01), Tool Misuse and Exploitation (ASI02), Identity and Privilege Abuse (ASI03), Agentic Supply Chain Vulnerabilities (ASI04), Unexpected Code Execution (ASI05), and Human-Agent Trust Exploitation (ASI09).
These examples point to scenarios such as an agent’s goals being manipulated, unsafe use of tools, stolen or excessive authority, compromised dependencies or components, unintended code execution, and misplaced trust in an agent’s account of its actions. The source pages described here do not show every entry in the complete ordered Top 10, so this is not a complete list of all ten categories.
How to compare agent designs or controls
The OWASP architecture prompts suggest practical comparison dimensions. Use these to explain why two systems—or two versions of the same system—have different risk profiles, rather than treating the Top 10 as a vendor ranking.
Quick Recap
- Level of autonomy and the actions possible without human approval.
- Breadth of tool access, especially which tools can write or execute actions.
- Identity design and the scope of credentials or permissions.
- Exposure to untrusted content that may affect agent behavior.
- Whether memory persists, what it contains, and whether it is shared.
- Inter-agent communication and the ability to delegate work.
- Number and placement of approval points, including whether they can be bypassed.
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