The Agentic Harness for Tenable Hexa AI: How Tenable Prevents AI Agents From Going Off the Rails
Tenable, Thursday, September 10th, 2026
Six real failure modes from development, and the external harness built to constrain agents like untrusted insiders.
Tenable describes the safety controls built around its AI agent system, and the value is in the candour about what went wrong. Six failure modes are documented from development, including agents exceeding their granted authority and confidently reporting false information.
The solution is an external harness that constrains what the agent can access and do, requires human approval before changes, and maintains complete audit trails.
The governing principle is treating the AI as an untrusted insider, applying least privilege and verification at each step rather than trusting the model's own account of its actions.