The New Tool That Watches Your AI Agents in Real Time

30-Second Summary

Alterion, founded by a former McKinsey Partner and a former Google Engineering VP, launched Draco on July 16, 2026: a runtime control plane that sits between your AI agents and your enterprise systems, monitoring every prompt, action, and payload in real time. It requires no code changes to existing agents, maps controls to SOC 2, ISO 42001, and the EU AI Act, and can block high-risk actions before they complete. The launch marks the clearest signal yet that AI agent governance is becoming its own infrastructure category, separate from the AI platforms and the traditional security stack.

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At a Glance

• Topic: AI Security / Agent Governance
• Company: Alterion
• Date: July 16, 2026
• Announcement: Launch of Draco, a runtime control plane for enterprise AI agents
• What Changed: For the first time, enterprises can apply real-time governance to AI agent actions without modifying the agents themselves
• Why It Matters: Most enterprise agent deployments lack any real-time visibility into what agents are actually doing, creating compliance, security, and operational blind spots
• Who Should Care: Security, risk, and compliance leaders at organisations running AI agents in production; operators preparing for EU AI Act obligations; any company using AI agents that touch customer data or internal systems

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Key Facts

• Founded by Alharith Hussin (former McKinsey Partner) and Asim Husain (former Google Engineering VP)
• Draco launched July 16, 2026
• Monitors every prompt, action, and payload in real time via Helix, Alterion's runtime intelligence layer
• Applies programmable guardrails before high-risk actions complete
• Requires no agent code changes and no SDK integrations
• Deployment timeline is days, not months
• Covers the full OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications
• Maps controls to SOC 2, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, and EU AI Act
• Generates audit-ready evidence packages on demand
• Integrates with SIEM, SOAR, and GRC systems
• Operates across clouds, vendors, and endpoints from a single control plane

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What Happened

Alterion launched Draco on July 16, 2026, describing it as the first runtime control plane built specifically for enterprise AI agents. The product addresses a gap that has opened as organisations have moved AI agents into production: most governance tools were designed for design-time policy setting, not real-time agent behaviour. Draco intercepts and analyses agent traffic as it happens.

The platform is structured around three functions. Explore discovers every agent operating across the enterprise, including shadow agents and SaaS-embedded automation that IT teams may not know exist, and builds baseline behavioural profiles automatically. Protect applies context-aware threat detection, covering the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications and routing alerts to existing SIEM and SOAR infrastructure. Comply maps agent activity to regulatory frameworks and generates audit-ready evidence on demand.

Co-founder Alharith Hussin described the core problem Draco solves: "Most governance tools work at design time. They set rules when agents are built, then hope those rules hold when agents are running. Draco sits in the runtime, sees every action in context, and enforces policy at the moment it matters." Co-founder Asim Hussin added: "Every enterprise we talk to has the same situation: agents in production, and no real visibility into what those agents are actually doing."

The no-code-change deployment model is significant. Previous approaches to agent governance required teams to instrument their agents directly, adding logging, audit hooks, and policy enforcement into the agent code. Draco operates at the network and infrastructure layer instead, observing agent traffic without touching the agents themselves. This brings deployment time down to days rather than the months previously required for comparable coverage.

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Why It Matters

Agent deployments have outpaced governance infrastructure. The enterprise AI market moved fast in 2025 and 2026, with major platforms pushing agents into production workflows. Security and compliance tooling has not kept pace. Draco is the first product explicitly designed to close that gap at runtime rather than at design time.

Regulated industries face a specific compliance crunch. The EU AI Act's high-risk system requirements, SOC 2 audit expectations for automated systems, and NIST AI RMF guidance all require documented evidence of agent behaviour. Without runtime monitoring, producing that evidence is a manual and incomplete process. Draco's on-demand evidence packages directly address this.

Shadow agents are a real and growing problem. SaaS platforms, productivity tools, and cloud services are embedding AI agents by default. Most enterprise IT teams do not have a complete inventory of the agents operating on their infrastructure. Draco's Explore function is the first enterprise-grade tool for mapping this.

The founders bring credibility the category has lacked. Enterprise security buyers are cautious. A founding team combining McKinsey strategy and Google engineering backgrounds, targeting Fortune 500 and regulated industry buyers, signals that Alterion is building for procurement cycles and compliance conversations, not the developer community first.

Runtime control changes the risk calculus for agent deployment. Without real-time governance, organisations face a binary choice: deploy agents with accepted blind spots, or restrict deployment until governance is in place. Draco offers a third path: deploy agents now and add governance at runtime, without rebuilding anything.

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The David and Goliath View

The most important question for any operator running AI agents right now is not "what model are we using" but "what are our agents actually doing." Model quality is publicly benchmarked and relatively transparent. Agent behaviour in production is not. An agent connected to your CRM, your email, and your internal documents is making decisions at a speed and volume that no human reviewer can match, and most enterprises have no systematic way to see what those decisions are.

Draco is the first product we have seen that takes this problem seriously at the infrastructure level. The no-code-change deployment model is the key detail: it means governance does not depend on developer buy-in or agent rebuild cycles. A security or compliance team can deploy Draco independently of the teams building and running agents. That separation of concerns is exactly what regulated industries need.

The timing matters too. EU AI Act obligations are becoming real, SOC 2 auditors are asking about automated systems, and enterprise buyers are starting to demand governance evidence before signing agent contracts. Operators who have governance infrastructure in place when these conversations happen will move faster than those who are still building it. That is the David and Goliath opportunity here: small and mid-size companies that build governance infrastructure now will close enterprise deals that larger competitors, still running agents without visibility, will lose.

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Where This Fits in the AI Stack

Draco operates at the agent governance layer, a new tier that sits between:

• AI models and platforms (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) which provide capability
• Agent frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, Microsoft MAF) which provide execution architecture
• Traditional security tools (SIEM, SOAR, DLP) which were not designed for agent-speed decision flows

The emergence of a dedicated agent governance layer mirrors what happened in cloud infrastructure, where security and compliance tooling eventually became a separate stack tier rather than an add-on to existing tools. Alterion is positioning to own that tier for the agentic era.

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Questions Operators Are Asking

Do we need this if our agents are from a single vendor? Yes. Single-vendor agent deployments still produce complex chains of tool calls, data access, and automated decisions that the vendor platform does not audit at the granularity compliance frameworks require. Draco works across vendor ecosystems and provides the cross-platform view that neither individual vendors nor traditional security tools offer.

What is the EU AI Act exposure for our current agent deployments? If your agents touch hiring, credit, insurance, benefits, or critical infrastructure, they likely fall under high-risk classification requirements that came into effect in stages from 2025 onward. Draco's Comply function maps to EU AI Act controls and generates evidence packages, but you need to classify your systems first. If you have not done a risk classification of your agent deployments, that is the first step.

Can we deploy this without involving our development teams? Yes, with caveats. Draco requires no code changes to agents, and the Explore function discovers agents without developer input. But configuring programmable guardrails and integrating with your SIEM and GRC systems will involve your security operations team. The sales cycle will likely involve security, compliance, and procurement rather than engineering.

How is this different from prompt filtering or output moderation? Prompt filtering and output moderation work at the input and output layer of a single model call. Draco works at the agent layer, monitoring multi-step action chains, tool calls, data access patterns, and cross-system behaviour. It catches risks that emerge from sequences of individually acceptable actions, not just individual prompts.

What does deployment actually look like? Alterion describes deployment in days rather than months, with no agent code changes required. The platform operates at the network and infrastructure layer, which means it can be deployed by a security team without waiting for development cycles. Evidence packages for SOC 2 and EU AI Act frameworks are generated on demand once controls are configured.

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Citable Summary

Alterion launched Draco on July 16, 2026: a runtime control plane for enterprise AI agents that monitors every prompt, action, and payload in real time without requiring code changes to existing agents. The platform covers the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications, maps controls to SOC 2, ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF, and the EU AI Act, and generates audit-ready evidence on demand. Founded by former McKinsey and Google executives, Alterion targets regulated enterprises that have deployed agents into production without real-time governance visibility. Draco deploys in days rather than months and integrates with existing SIEM, SOAR, and GRC infrastructure.