Governance of autonomy is the set of rules, controls, and oversight mechanisms that constrain what an autonomous system may decide, access, or execute. In practice, it defines the system’s operating boundaries: which tools it can call, which data it can read, what actions need approval, and when a human must intervene.
This matters in cybersecurity because autonomous agents can turn a simple model into a powerful operator inside business systems. If permissions are too broad, an attacker may abuse prompt injection, stolen credentials, or malicious inputs to make the agent expose data, change records, or trigger harmful workflows. Strong governance reduces that risk through least privilege, scoped connectors, logging, approval gates, rollback paths, and continuous monitoring. Defenders use these controls to keep autonomy useful while making actions auditable, reversible, and policy-compliant.