AI Security — Compliance & Governance

Real-time compliance reporting and deterministic security enforcement for the MCP servers your AI agents depend on.

NIST AI RMF OWASP MCP Top 10 EU AI Act ISO 42001 CSA AICM
The compliance blind spot

MCP is where AI compliance obligations are won or lost.

MCP has become the de facto standard for AI agent-to-tool integration. AI agents now autonomously invoke tools, read resources and act on enterprise data through MCP servers, shifting integration from deterministic API calls to dynamic, agent-driven interactions. But MCP adoption is outpacing governance — Gartner reports that 40% of developers cite security, privacy or regulatory concerns with AI-powered applications.

Unmanaged MCP adoption creates shadow integration paths that bypass enterprise controls. A single mis-scoped tool, an unpinned instruction set or a logging gap produces untraceable agent actions and no evidence trail to prove to a regulator or auditor which controls were in place, or that they held. The NSA and OWASP both conclude that the protocol's security posture depends entirely on implementation discipline, not on protocol guarantees.
The 42Crunch approach

42Crunch MCP Governance: from Discovery to Enforcement.

42Crunch enables enterprises to govern the MCP servers they expose to agents, partners and customers. It goes beyond discovering servers and identifying risks: it evidences compliance against the frameworks you are accountable to, remediates vulnerabilities and blocks non-compliant servers — ensuring only secure, approved MCP services reach production.

01

MCP Discovery

Auto-discover, register and inventory MCP servers. Generate an MCP Contract for every server.

02

MCP Audit

Score data, security and protocol against the 42Crunch Knowledge Base — a deterministic baseline.

03

MCP Scan

Drift and policy-conformance scanning. Identity, runtime and behavioral tests.

04

Runtime Governance

Enforce Security Quality Gates in CI/CD. Block non-compliant servers, close the feedback loop.

Compliance evidence, at every step: every audit, scan and gate decision is mapped to control — NIST AI RMF, OWASP MCP Top 10, EU AI Act, ISO 42001, CSA AICM.
Headline capability

Real-time compliance reporting against regulatory frameworks.

42Crunch continuously evaluates every MCP server against the regulatory and industry frameworks your organization is accountable to, and maps each individual finding to the specific control it breaches. Compliance posture is computed by the control itself on every audit and every scan — not assembled from documents at audit time.

FrameworkWhat 42Crunch evidencesReporting
NIST AI RMFGovern, Map, Measure and Manage functions evidenced for every agent-accessible tool surface.Per-finding control mapping
OWASP MCP Top 10Deterministic coverage of all ten MCP vulnerability classes, scored per server.Scored 0–100 / A–F
EU AI ActTechnical documentation, logging, human oversight and risk-management obligations for high-risk AI systems.Versioned audit record
ISO/IEC 42001AI management-system controls operationalized as machine-checkable requirements.Continuous conformity
CSA AICMAI Controls Matrix domains — including CCC and GRC control families — mapped to concrete findings.Per-domain findings
42Crunch MCP compliance tab showing findings mapped to OWASP, EU AI Act, ISO 42001, NIST RMF, and CSA AICM frameworks
5 / 5 frameworks mapped automatically
Benefits to GRC & security

Built for audit evidence, not dashboards.

Continuous evidenceEvery audit, scan and Security Quality Gate decision produces a versioned, scored, framework-mapped record — not a point-in-time attestation.
DeterministicThe same server evaluated twice returns the same score, the same findings and the same verdict — not LLM-judged. Reproducibility is what makes a record admissible as audit evidence.
Finding-level traceabilityEach finding carries a control reference, severity and remediation, so remediation effort maps directly to regulatory exposure.
Exportable reportingCompliance state downloads as a report for auditors, regulators and customer security reviews — without manual assembly.
Enforced, not advisorySecurity Quality Gates block non-compliant MCP servers in CI/CD before they reach production.
Cross-framework reuseEach finding is evaluated once and mapped simultaneously to every framework it touches — NIST AI RMF, OWASP MCP Top 10, EU AI Act, ISO 42001, CSA AICM — so GRC teams stop re-running a separate assessment per regulation.
How it works

Deterministic MCP security enforcement at scale.

42Crunch generates an MCP Contract for each server: a machine-readable, declarative specification of how that server must operate — its authentication requirements, authorization policies, operational limits, what each tool is permitted to do, and which security controls must be enforced. Every contract is written against a common enterprise policy schema, so coverage is consistent across the entire estate while remaining specific to each server. This contract is the single source of truth across discovery, audit, scanning and compliance reporting — every server is evaluated against explicit, approved requirements rather than subjective assessment.

Continuous MCP discovery & risk assessment

42Crunch continuously discovers MCP servers across the enterprise and generates an initial contract for each. Security teams gain an immediate inventory and risk assessment without waiting for developers to document servers manually.

Data sensitivity classification & risk-based access control

Each MCP tool is evaluated according to the sensitivity of the data it handles, the actions it performs and its actual response schema. Tools that modify data or perform high-impact actions are assigned a higher risk rating and subjected to stricter controls, including human-in-the-loop approval.

Continuous drift & OWASP MCP vulnerability detection

42Crunch continuously tests running MCP servers against their approved contracts, identifying OWASP MCP Top 10 vulnerabilities and unauthorized changes to tools, authentication, permissions, schemas, rate limits or runtime behavior before they expose connected agents and enterprise systems.

Audit-ready control traceability

Every security assessment and Security Quality Gate decision creates a versioned, scored governance record, providing evidence that required controls were evaluated and enforced.

Security coverage

MCP server vulnerability prevention.

By validating tool definitions, inputs, credentials, permissions, isolation and delegated identity against the approved MCP Contract, 42Crunch blocks unsafe MCP servers before connection and detects drift or malicious changes after deployment. The matrix below represents the principal ways an MCP server can be manipulated, over-privileged or used to expose enterprise systems and data.

MCP VulnerabilityDescription
Tool PoisoningMalicious instructions embedded in tool descriptions that hijack LLM behavior.
Rug PullsDynamic replacement of a trusted tool definition with a malicious one at runtime.
Code & Command InjectionModel-provided inputs passed directly to shell, SQL, or system APIs without validation.
Credential LeakageAPI keys and OAuth tokens improperly stored, logged, or cached.
Excessive PermissionsOver-privileged tools violating least-privilege — one breach compromises everything.
Insufficient IsolationCross-tenant data leakage, shared service accounts, unsandboxed execution.
Confused DeputyToken passthrough allows an MCP server to be tricked into misusing user privileges.

Source: OWASP, A Practical Guide for Secure MCP Server Development.

See it

Security and compliance posture across every MCP server, ranked by risk.

42Crunch MCP Dashboard showing security and compliance posture across every MCP server in the organization, ranked by risk
Ranked by risk across every MCP server
Immediate impact

What the agentic enterprise gets.

Full AI regulatory framework compliance

NIST AI RMF · OWASP MCP Top 10 · EU AI Act · ISO 42001 · CSA AICM — all enforced through 42Crunch Security Quality Gates.

Compliance baseline in 60 seconds

Score any MCP server rapidly, prioritize remediation sooner, and shorten the security review to avoid release delays.

Zero-touch MCP discovery

Auto-inventory of MCP servers across cloud infrastructure, with evaluation starting immediately to accelerate time to market.

Full OWASP MCP vulnerability coverage

Deterministic coverage across all OWASP MCP Top 10 vulnerability classes, to reduce gaps in defense.

Frequently asked

MCP Governance & compliance, answered.

What is 42Crunch MCP Governance? +

42Crunch MCP Governance is a continuous compliance and security enforcement capability for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. It discovers MCP servers across the enterprise, audits and scores them against a machine-readable MCP Contract, scans running servers for drift and OWASP MCP Top 10 vulnerabilities, and enforces Security Quality Gates in CI/CD — mapping every finding to the specific regulatory control it breaches (NIST AI RMF, OWASP MCP Top 10, EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001, CSA AICM).

What is an MCP server, and why does it need governance? +

An MCP server exposes tools, resources and prompts that AI agents can invoke autonomously. Unlike a REST API called deterministically, an MCP server is invoked by an LLM-driven agent — so a mis-scoped tool or an unpinned instruction set can produce untraceable agent actions with no audit trail. Governance closes that gap.

Which compliance frameworks does 42Crunch MCP Governance map to? +

NIST AI RMF (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage), the OWASP MCP Top 10, the EU AI Act's technical documentation, logging and human-oversight obligations, ISO/IEC 42001 AI management-system controls, and the CSA AI Controls Matrix (AICM), including its CCC and GRC control families.

Is the compliance scoring deterministic, or generated by an LLM? +

Deterministic. The same MCP server evaluated twice returns the same score, the same findings and the same verdict, because scoring runs against a common enterprise policy schema rather than subjective LLM judgment. That reproducibility is what makes the record usable as audit evidence.

Do I need to write an MCP Contract by hand? +

No. Point 42Crunch at a live MCP server URL and it discovers every tool, resource and prompt automatically and generates an initial contract, including best-effort inferences for risk level and data classification.

How does 42Crunch enforce compliance, rather than just report on it? +

Security Quality Gates (SQGs) block non-compliant MCP servers in CI/CD before they reach production, so a failing server cannot ship rather than merely appearing on a dashboard as a known issue.

Can I get compliance evidence for an auditor or regulator? +

Yes. Every audit, scan and gate decision produces a versioned, scored, framework-mapped record that exports as a report for auditors, regulators and customer security reviews, without manual assembly.

How fast can I get a baseline compliance score for an MCP server? +

Under 60 seconds. Point a scan at any MCP server URL to get a scored report against the OWASP MCP Top 10 and your configured regulatory frameworks — no agent install, no deployment, no commitment required.

How is MCP Governance different from a generic API gateway or WAF? +

A gateway or WAF inspects traffic at the network layer against generic rule sets — it doesn't know what an MCP tool is permitted to do, what data it touches, or which regulatory control a violation maps to. 42Crunch works from the MCP Contract, an explicit tool-level specification, so every finding is contract-aware and traceable to root cause rather than a generic traffic anomaly.

How is this different from an AI-SPM or CSPM posture-management tool? +

Most AI-SPM/CSPM tools inventory and score cloud or AI assets against general best-practice checklists at a point in time. 42Crunch is protocol-specific to MCP, generates a machine-readable contract per server, continuously re-tests for drift against that contract, and enforces the result in CI/CD — posture management without an enforceable gate leaves a finding open instead of blocking it.

Why not just use an LLM to judge whether an MCP server is compliant? +

Because LLM judgment isn't reproducible — ask the same question twice and you can get two different answers, which doesn't hold up as audit evidence. 42Crunch's audit and compliance scoring is deterministic: the same server evaluated twice returns the same score, findings and verdict, which is what makes it admissible as evidence in a regulator or auditor conversation.

Is this the same as a one-time penetration test or manual security review? +

No. A pentest is a point-in-time snapshot that goes stale the moment a tool definition changes. 42Crunch continuously discovers and re-tests MCP servers, so drift — an unauthorized change to a tool, permission or auth scheme — is caught between review cycles rather than at the next annual audit.

We already use a GRC platform or spreadsheet process for compliance evidence. Why do we need this too? +

A GRC platform is where evidence is stored and reported to leadership and auditors. 42Crunch is where that evidence is generated, at the point every audit and scan actually runs, instead of being assembled manually afterward from documents and screenshots. The exportable report is built to feed directly into existing GRC workflows, not replace them.

Does this compete with or replace our existing API security tooling? +

No — it's the same governance model (Contract → Audit → Scan → Protect) 42Crunch has applied to REST and GraphQL APIs for a decade, now extended to MCP. Existing OpenAPI-based governance keeps running unchanged; MCP governance is additive coverage for the agent-to-tool surface those APIs didn't previously cover.

Determine your MCP server compliance baseline in 60 seconds.

Point the 42Crunch MCP scan at any MCP server and receive a scored report against the OWASP MCP Top 10 and your regulatory frameworks in under 60 seconds. No agent, no deployment, no commitment required.