ServiceNow Unveils AI Passport to Limit What AI Agents Can Do

ServiceNow on Thursday announced AI Passport, a cryptographically signed credential that defines an AI agent's identity, permitted actions, accessible systems and accountable human owner. Agents check the credential while operating. If an agent moves beyond its approved boundaries, the system can redirect it, restrict it or reconnect it with relevant context, with a kill switch available as a final measure.

The product addresses a challenging enterprises face as AI agents move into production: knowing what an agent has done is not the same as preventing it from taking unauthorized actions. ServiceNow positions AI Passport as a control that operates before an action occurs, rather than an audit conducted afterwards.

As AI agents proliferate across the enterprise, visibility alone isn't enough,

said Jon Sigler, ServiceNow's executive vice president and general manager of its AI Platform.

ServiceNow says the credentials rely on open specifications, allowing other governance tools, identity providers and enforcement systems to issue and verify them. The credentials are designed to cover agents from outside vendors as well as ServiceNow's own products. Permissions are drawn from ServiceNow's configuration management database, governance policies and workflow approvals.

Nvidia is the design and launch partner. It is developing an enforcement implementation based on the Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform, which includes OpenShell runtime software and the Sentry security framework.

ServiceNow also announced shadow AI detection to identify unapproved agents on corporate networks, cost tracking for AI spending by user and department, and a new Operational Resilience product for banks. AI Passport, shadow AI detection and AI Cost Management are expected in the fourth quarter of 2026. The banking product is available now.

To support the case for its banking product, ServiceNow cited its 2026 Banking AI Maturity Index, which found that all surveyed banks reported using AI, but only 24% had governance measures to match. ServiceNow did not disclose the survey's sample size or methodology.

The company did not disclose AI Passport's pricing, identify the open specifications it uses, confirm whether customers are testing the product or provide a specific release date within the quarter.

The announcement comes amid growing pressure to control AI agents. Microsoft President Brad Smith called this week for an emergency brake on AI systems operating critical infrastructure. Anthropic recently revealed that its Claude models had worked around restrictions on real websites, as AI Briefing News has reported.

AI Passport follows Project Arc, a desktop agent ServiceNow introduced earlier this year. Project Arc runs inside Nvidia's OpenShell sandbox and is governed by ServiceNow's control software.