The Authority Gateway intercepts every autonomous action. VEX-1 verifies every voice command. Every decision is sealed in a Certified Action Record.
Execution Exposure Scoring bounds spend before execution. VEX-1 denies voice-clone fraud at the gate. Provenance Tagging and the Session Exposure Ledger contain regulated data with cryptographic proof. Five planes. Twenty Foundation standards. Six Industry Authority Packs. Ten of ten industry rails fully built. One cryptographic chain sealing every Certified Action Record.
Mapped, not yet third-party audited. Cryptographer review pending. Foundation reviewer engagement pending.
Microsoft Agent 365 is a registry and access control plane inside the Microsoft estate. AuthorityRail is the pre-execution authorization standard with cryptographically signed evidence records, governed by an open standards foundation, that works across every cloud, every agent framework, and every regulated industry.
Detection platforms show what agents did. AuthorityRail decides what they are allowed to do — before they do it — and produces a cryptographically signed record of that decision.
Three product categories operate in the agent-authority space. They are not substitutes for one another — they act at different moments, produce different artifacts, and are governed differently. AuthorityRail is the execution authority layer.
ARES-v1 — the Agent Runtime Execution Standard — is governed by the AuthorityRail Standards Foundation, not by AuthorityRail the company. This is the same separation that lets the PCI Security Standards Council govern PCI DSS rather than Visa or Mastercard, and the IETF govern TCP/IP rather than Cisco or AWS. The AuthorityRail platform is the production reference implementation of ARES-v1, under the same Foundation that governs the standard. No Tier 1 competitor in the agent-authority space has a credible standards-body governance story.
→ ARES-v1 specificationAuthorityRail launches in the window between the autonomous-agent adoption maturity gap and the enforcement-driven procurement urgency that closes it.
The adoption has happened. The governance maturity has not. The enforcement deadlines are dated. AuthorityRail is the execution authority layer that closes the gap.
The AI agent authority category contains substantial vendors — Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit (Agent Mesh + Agent Runtime + Agent Compliance), Zenity (Gartner Company to Beat April 2026), OpenBox (single-SDK runtime authority with cryptographic verification), Sekuire OAGS (Open Agent Governance Specification), Bifrost, Virtue AI, OpenAI Frontier (Promptfoo acquisition), Microsoft Agent 365. Each addresses a subset of enterprise AI authority. None ships all five planes (Guard, Wallet, Context, Data, Proof) as first-class peers governed by twenty open standards under independent Foundation governance with six vertical Authority Packs and one cryptographic chain across all of it. AuthorityRail does.
VEX-1 with three-class clone detection. Voice credential enrollment with privacy-by-design (raw audio NEVER persisted). HCES-1 escalation for high-stakes voice actions.
No competitor ships voice.Eight ingestion adapters, eight destination types, seven default detectors (PII, PHI, PCI, secrets, IP, attorney-client privilege, fair-lending), three-state consent engine, signed egress audit.
No competitor ships this depth.Agent Registry with declared scope, four-state lifecycle, seven drift classes, four-CAR atomic decommissioning, Bypass Detection for shadow agents.
Customer-owned, runtime-independent — not Microsoft-only.Six regulatory feed adapters (Federal Register, EU Official Journal, NIST, ISO, state legislative, bar associations), 4-hour critical-priority review, Compliance Posture Timeline for board reporting.
No competitor ships this.Six pre-configured packs covering 105 regulatory citations: HCP-v1 (healthcare), FSP-v1 (financial), DEP-v1 (defense), INP-v1 (insurance), LGP-v1 (legal), ESP-v1 (enterprise SaaS).
Deploy in 30 seconds via /v1/packs/apply.Every autonomous system requires authority before execution. AI agents are the leading edge — voice-driven systems are next, robotic systems and physical AI follow. AuthorityRail is built for the full category, starting with where the urgency is highest today.
AuthorityRail evaluates every autonomous action before it executes. The five planes — Guard, Wallet, Context, Data, Proof — assess identity, intent, policy, compliance, spend, exposure, insurance, memory, routing, coordination, provenance, signing, and audit. Latency is published decision-class-tiered and processing-path-tiered — Fast Path, Standard Path, Escalation Path — never as a single conflated number. The substance is the guarantee: the gate signs and durably persists a Certified Action Record before the action reaches any downstream system. A gate that returns a decision label fast but issues the record slowly has not authorized anything fast. AuthorityRail prioritizes deterministic authorization integrity over speculative latency theater.
AI agents are the leading edge of autonomous systems.
Voice-clone wire fraud is an active attack vector. AuthorityRail closes it at the architectural layer.
Data egress under cryptographic audit, not retroactive logging.
Continuous compliance posture, not quarterly snapshots.
Gartner, McKinsey, PwC, Deloitte, and Forrester — five firms with different methodologies, different surveys, different audiences, and different revenue models — all converge on the same six concerns about enterprise AI and autonomous systems. The convergence is itself the procurement signal: when five firms with different incentives identify the same six concerns, the concerns are real.
Fragmented controls, inadequate oversight, no enterprise-wide policy enforcement.
Five planes plus Authority Constraints API plus twenty Foundation standards plus Compliance Posture Timeline.
Unauthorized AI use outside IT control, data exposure, compliance incidents.
Agent Registry plus Bypass Detection plus Drift Detection plus Provenance Layer with Tag Conservation Rules.
Low AI fluency, siloed adoption, missing skills for handling autonomous systems.
Six pre-configured Industry Authority Packs plus Customer Adaptive Authority plus Dashboard for non-technical buyers.
Pilot purgatory, no enterprise financial impact, fragmented tactical projects.
30-second Industry Authority Pack deployment plus Wallet Plane Decision Economics plus decision-class-tiered latency SLAs.
Data leakage, IP loss, regulatory compliance gaps, model explainability.
Data Plane with seven detectors plus VEX-1 voice authentication plus ARRS-v1.2 hardware-bound runtime authentication shipped.
Agent-specific controls missing, weak authority maturity, runtime credential risks, voice-clone threats.
Four AI-native modules plus HCES-1 plus VEX-1 plus WorkforceRail clearance integration plus the AuthorityRail Standards Foundation as customer-owned platform-agnostic guardian agent layer.
The Gartner Guardian Agent Market Guide explicitly calls for "enterprise-owned guardian agent layers that sit above individual platforms." AuthorityRail is that layer.
Sources: Gartner Top Cybersecurity Trends for 2026, Hype Cycle for Agentic AI 2026, Guardian Agent Market Guide. McKinsey State of AI Trust 2026, Securing the Agentic Enterprise. PwC 2026 AI Business Predictions, Risk Agenda for Assurance Functions 2026. Deloitte State of AI in the Enterprise 2026. Forrester 2026 Technology and Security Predictions.
Five planes. Four AI-native modules. Voice Execution Gateway. Six pre-configured industry packs. Seventeen Foundation standards. Seven trust domains with operational separation.
identity, intent, policy, compliance
Should this action ever execute?
spend, exposure, insurance
What does this action cost?
memory, routing, coordination
What context does this action need?
provenance, exposure, egress
Should data leave the actor’s boundary?
signing, audit, verification
What evidence proves the decision?
observe-recommend-explain-approve-deploy-CAR loop. Seven pattern classes. Customer-controlled adaptation.
Six pre-configured packs covering 105 regulatory citations. 30-second deployment.
Six regulatory feed adapters, 4-hour critical review.
Proactive registration with declared scope, four-state lifecycle, seven drift classes.
AuthorityRail is the only execution authority infrastructure with a voice gateway at v1.0. VEX-1 implements three-class clone detection running in parallel, each class under a 200ms hard timeout with fail-closed semantics — the timeout is an enforced ceiling, not a benchmark. Voice credential enrollment with privacy-by-design — raw audio is NEVER persisted, only 256-dimensional embeddings and signed transcripts. Phone numbers stored hashed not plaintext. HCES-1 escalation via the existing Twilio mobile_approval flow. Voice attack surface closed at the architectural layer.
Different operational ownership per the cryptographic separation pattern. Compromise of one key does not compromise the others.
All twenty Foundation standards reuse ARES-v1.1 cryptographic primitives: pure Ed25519 over COSE_Sign1, length-prefixed canonical inputs. No parallel cryptosystem. Single primitive surface to migrate when post-quantum cryptography becomes operational. Foundation governance under ASFC-v1 with three external reviewers per standard advancement.
Read the standardsEach plane is a peer evaluation surface inside the Authority Gateway. Together they evaluate every /v1/execute request before it reaches its destination. No named competitor — Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit, Zenity, OpenBox, Sekuire OAGS, Bifrost, Virtue AI, OpenAI Frontier, Microsoft Agent 365 — ships all five as first-class peers under one cryptographic chain.
Should this action ever execute?
identity, intent, policy, compliance
What does this action cost?
spend, exposure, insurance, risk multipliers
What context does this action need?
memory, routing, coordination, clearance ceiling
Should data leave the actor’s boundary?
provenance, exposure, egress, detection
What evidence proves the decision?
signing, audit, verification, federation manifest
The five planes plus the four AI-native modules (Adaptive, Packs, Compliance Monitor, Registry) plus the Voice Execution Gateway plus the six Industry Authority Packs plus the twenty Foundation standards plus the seven trust domains under independent Foundation governance — that is the architecture procurement-grade buyers verify against the AuthorityRail module inventory in five minutes.
Source of truth: standards/audits/empire-module-inventory-2026-04.md §4 documents all five planes with service paths, plane contracts, and homepage references.
AuthorityRail’s six pre-configured Industry Authority Packs cover 105 regulatory citations across Healthcare (HCP-v1), Financial Services (FSP-v1), Defense (DEP-v1), Legal (LGP-v1), Insurance (INP-v1), and Enterprise SaaS (ESP-v1). Each pack ships vertical-specific defaults, regulatory citation indexes, never-allow action classes, and voice channel trust scores. Deploy in 30 seconds via /v1/packs/apply. No named competitor — Microsoft AGT, Zenity, OpenBox, Sekuire OAGS, Bifrost, Virtue AI, OpenAI Frontier, Microsoft Agent 365 — ships vertical Authority Packs.
Hospital CIO, Healthcare CISO, Privacy Officer.
Bank CISO, Asset Manager Compliance Officer, Broker-Dealer GC.
Defense Contractor Security Director, Federal Agency CIO.
Law Firm General Counsel, Corporate Legal Department.
Insurance Carrier CRO, MGA Compliance Officer.
B2B SaaS CISO, Multi-Tenant Privacy Officer.
Every autonomous system requires authority before execution. The regulatory landscape your enterprise navigates is the regulatory landscape AuthorityRail’s Industry Authority Packs are built to address. Deploy in 30 seconds. Audit cryptographically.
The AI agent authority category contains eight named competitors as of April 2026 — Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit, Zenity (Gartner Company to Beat), OpenBox, Sekuire OAGS, Bifrost, Virtue AI, OpenAI Frontier (Promptfoo acquisition), Microsoft Agent 365. Each addresses a subset of enterprise AI authority. None ships all five planes (Guard, Wallet, Context, Data, Proof) as first-class peers under one cryptographic chain governed by twenty open standards under independent AuthorityRail Standards Foundation governance with six vertical Authority Packs covering 105 regulatory citations.
| Concern | Microsoft AGT | Zenity | OpenBox | Sekuire OAGS | Bifrost | Virtue AI | OpenAI Frontier | Microsoft Agent 365 | AuthorityRail |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Authority failure | EU AI Act + HIPAA + SOC 2 + OWASP mapping | Multi-cloud authority | Single-SDK runtime | Open spec only | Partial | Reactive | Vulnerability testing | Microsoft only | Five planes + 20 standards + 10/10 rails |
| Shadow AI | Agent Mesh cryptographic identity (Microsoft deploy) | Multi-cloud detection | Cryptographic verification | Spec only | Limited | None | None | Microsoft only | Agent Registry + Bypass + Drift |
| Employee readiness | Microsoft-stack focus | Generic | Generic | Generic | Generic | Generic | Generic | Microsoft only | 6 packs + Adaptive + Dashboard |
| Poor ROI / scale | Microsoft-stack only | Pilot to production | Pilot-grade | Spec only | Pilot-grade | Reactive | Pilot-grade | Microsoft only | 30-second pack + Wallet Plane |
| Security / privacy | Agent Mesh + Ed25519 (Microsoft) | Multi-cloud monitoring | Single SDK | Spec only | Limited | Post-execution | Vulnerability testing | Microsoft only | Data Plane + VEX-1 + ARRS-v1.2 (6 hardware surfaces) |
| Autonomous-agent control | Execution rings (Microsoft) | Multi-cloud detection | Cryptographic verification | Spec only | Partial | Post-execution | Vulnerability testing | Microsoft only | 4 AI-native modules + HCES-1 |
Hover any competitor name for the public-materials summary. Each cell is rendered honestly per public materials — no unfair characterization, no hiding of strengths.
This is the procurement-stage value proposition that justifies seven-figure ACVs in regulated verticals.
→ Read the full Competitive Honesty page (every competitor named, public-materials summary, where AuthorityRail is deeper or narrower)AuthorityRail’s twenty open standards are administered by the AuthorityRail Standards Foundation (ASFC-v1) — an independent public governance body with cryptographic primitive consistency rules, a 12-month compatibility window, three-external-reviewer engagement requirements per standard advancement, and the no-duplicate-primitive rule added per Path B Resolution Execution Report 2026-04-30. The independence matters at procurement: Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit is open-source-but-Microsoft-owned. AuthorityRail Standards Foundation is independent. Customers in regulated verticals procurement-evaluate the difference. Foundation portfolio advanced from seventeen to nineteen standards on 2026-04-30 (SRI-v1 + DRI-v1 from Draft to Tier 2 Published per ASFC-v1 §3.1) and from nineteen to twenty on 2026-05-01 with WARS-v1.2 (human-vs-agent identity boundary) and ARES-v1.3 (economic_records sealed-field block on the CAR).
AuthorityRail’s architectural quality posture is procurement-grade: every claim is verifiable independently. Clone the repo, run the canonical reproduction commands, verify any CAR against the federation manifest. The Standards Site verification console runs entirely client-side — no trust required in AuthorityRail’s servers.
git clone https://github.com/AuthorityRail-ai/authorityrail.git cd authorityrail npm install --include=dev
npx tsx packages/axap/scripts/verify-test-vectors.ts ares-v1.2 npx tsx packages/axap/scripts/verify-test-vectors.ts ades-v1
curl -s https://[customer-gateway]/v1/cars/[car_id] \ | npx tsx packages/axap/scripts/verify-car.ts
| Cryptographic primitive review | Pending — engagement target Trail of Bits / NCC Group / Cure53 / Filippo Valsorda |
| Foundation reviewer engagement | Pending per ASFC-v1 §3 |
| Production-shape benchmarks | Shipping post-launch per PRODUCTION_SHAPE_ROADMAP.md |
| Test vectors for fifteen standards | Shipping in v1.0.1 |
| First three pilot customers | In deployment phase |
| False-positive telemetry | Shipping after first 90 days of pilot deployment |
None of these engagements is hidden. All are surfaced openly, with honest timelines. AuthorityRail’s architectural quality posture is the procurement signal that distinguishes the Foundation from vendors making category claims without substance.
Read the Reproducibility GuideFour tiers. Volume-based, with included CARs per month and per-CAR overage. Built for procurement-stage enterprise pricing.
$99/mo
For: teams piloting AuthorityRail on a single autonomous workflow.
$499/mo
For: production deployments running multiple autonomous workflows.
$1,999/mo
For: large agent fleets and regulated-vertical production volume.
Contact Sales
For: regulated, custom-volume, or sovereign-deployment enterprises.
Pricing is denominated in Certified Action Records (CARs) — the cryptographically signed authority record produced for every execution decision. Included quotas reset monthly. Overage bills via metered usage at the rates below. Customer-tier rates are the only thing on the customer invoice; internal Decision SKU classification is a metering primitive and never appears on a bill.
AI agents are deploying at machine speed. The cross-firm consensus is that 2026 is the year enterprise AI moves from pilot to production — and the year authority failures will produce publicly disclosed breaches. AuthorityRail is the unified architecture that prevents catastrophic loss while enabling the regulated-vertical deployment your enterprise needs.
For: CISO, General Counsel, Chief Risk Officer in regulated verticals.
We deploy AuthorityRail with your security and compliance teams in a 90-day pilot. Industry Authority Pack pre-configured for your vertical. Cryptographic audit trail from day one. Compliance Posture Timeline for board reporting. Voice-clone fraud prevention for executive approval flows. Mapped to your specific regulatory landscape.
For: Cryptographers, security researchers, AI safety researchers, policy/governance scholars, standards developers.
We engage external reviewers per ASFC-v1 §3 — three reviewers per standard advancement. The Foundation publishes reviewer reports openly. Cryptographer review engagement target: Trail of Bits, NCC Group, Cure53, or Filippo Valsorda. Currently pending engagement.
For: Technical journalists covering AI authority infrastructure, regulated verticals, or enterprise infrastructure.
We brief technical journalists on AuthorityRail’s open-standards architecture, the cross-firm analyst-firm convergence, and the unified-architecture claim. Journalist Briefing at apps/standards-site/docs/JOURNALIST_BRIEFING.md.
Every autonomous system requires authority before execution. AI agents are the leading edge.