How to Secure AI DevOps and Infrastructure Agents

AI agents managing infrastructure can create servers, modify networking rules, deploy containers, and access cloud credentials — a single ungated action can expose your entire production environment. SafeClaw by Authensor enforces deny-by-default policies on every infrastructure action your AI DevOps agent attempts, gating deployments, protecting secrets, and ensuring infrastructure-as-code changes pass through your approval workflow. Every action is evaluated in sub-milliseconds and recorded in a hash-chained audit trail.

Quick Start

npx @authensor/safeclaw

Creates a .safeclaw/ directory with deny-all defaults. Your DevOps agent cannot touch infrastructure until you write explicit allow rules.

Deployment Gating

AI agents should never deploy directly to production without approval. Gate deployment actions by environment:

# .safeclaw/policies/devops-agent.yaml
rules:
  - id: allow-dev-deploy
    action: shell.execute
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "kubectl apply--namespace=dev"
    reason: "Allow deployments to dev namespace"

- id: block-prod-deploy
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "kubectl apply--namespace=prod"
    reason: "Production deployments require human approval"

- id: block-helm-install-prod
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "helm {install,upgrade}--namespace prod"
    reason: "Helm installs to production are blocked"

- id: allow-dry-run
    action: shell.execute
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "--dry-run"
    reason: "Dry-run operations are always safe"

Infrastructure-as-Code Safety

When AI agents generate or modify Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation templates, gate the apply step:

rules:
  - id: allow-terraform-plan
    action: shell.execute
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "terraform plan*"
    reason: "Planning is read-only and safe"

- id: block-terraform-apply
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "terraform apply*"
    reason: "Apply requires human review of the plan"

- id: block-terraform-destroy
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "terraform destroy*"
    reason: "Destroy is always blocked for AI agents"

- id: allow-iac-file-writes
    action: file.write
    effect: allow
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "infra/*/.tf"
    reason: "Agent can write Terraform files for review"

Credential Protection

DevOps environments are rich with secrets. Prevent your AI agent from reading or exfiltrating credentials:

rules:
  - id: block-secret-file-reads
    action: file.read
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      path:
        pattern: "{/.env,/secret,/credential,/.pem,/.key,/kubeconfig}"
    reason: "Credential files are never readable by AI agents"

- id: block-cloud-metadata
    action: network.request
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      destination:
        pattern: "169.254.169.254*"
    reason: "Block SSRF attempts against cloud metadata service"

- id: block-vault-reads
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "vault read*"
    reason: "Agent cannot read secrets from Vault"

Network and Security Group Protection

Prevent AI agents from opening network ports or modifying security groups:

rules:
  - id: block-security-group-changes
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "aws ec2 {authorize,revoke}-security-group*"
    reason: "Security group modifications require human approval"

- id: block-firewall-changes
    action: shell.execute
    effect: deny
    conditions:
      command:
        pattern: "{iptables,ufw,firewall-cmd*}"
    reason: "Firewall changes are always blocked"

Why SafeClaw

• 446 tests covering infrastructure-specific policy evaluation patterns
• Deny-by-default — zero infrastructure access until explicitly permitted
• Sub-millisecond evaluation — no latency added to your CI/CD pipeline
• Hash-chained audit trail — every infrastructure action attempt is logged for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance
• Works with Claude AND OpenAI — one policy set regardless of which model drives your DevOps agent

Cross-References

• Infrastructure Agent Recipe
• How to Stop AI Agents from Leaking Keys
• Cloud Metadata SSRF Threat
• SOC 2 Agent Controls