Security Best Practices

Security is critical when deploying AI agents to production. This guide covers essential practices to keep your agents, data, and users safe.

The Security Mindset

Principle: Assume breach. Design systems that remain secure even if one component is compromised.

Key Principles:

Least Privilege - Minimum permissions needed
Defense in Depth - Multiple security layers
Zero Trust - Verify everything, trust nothing
Fail Secure - Errors should deny access, not grant it

Authentication & Authorization

API Keys

Do’s ✅

Create org API keys under Settings → Security → API keys with New key (sk_live_...); owners and admins can
Store third-party tokens only in Integrations connection setup (encrypted)
Use environment variables in your own apps that call the Auteryn API — never commit keys to git

OAuth Tokens

Best Practices:

Use OAuth over API keys when available
Request minimum scopes needed
Refresh tokens before expiry
Revoke unused tokens

User Authentication

For user-facing agents:

# Verify user identity
if not user.is_authenticated():
    return "Please log in first"

# Check permissions
if not user.has_permission("view_data"):
    return "Access denied"

Data Protection

Sensitive Data Handling

PII (Personally Identifiable Information):

# ❌ Bad: Logging PII
logger.info(f"User email: {user.email}")

# ✅ Good: Redact PII
logger.info(f"User: {user.id}")

# ✅ Good: Hash PII
import hashlib
hashed = hashlib.sha256(user.email.encode()).hexdigest()
logger.info(f"User hash: {hashed[:8]}")

Credit Card Data:

Data Encryption

At Rest:

# Auteryn encrypts stored data. In your own app, for extra sensitive fields:
import os
from cryptography.fernet import Fernet

key = os.environ["ENCRYPTION_KEY"]
cipher = Fernet(key)

# Encrypt
encrypted = cipher.encrypt(b"sensitive data")

# Decrypt
decrypted = cipher.decrypt(encrypted)

In Transit:

Always use HTTPS for APIs
Verify SSL certificates
Use TLS 1.2 or later

Input Validation

Sanitize User Input

SQL Injection Prevention:

# ❌ Bad: String concatenation
query = f"SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '{user_input}'"

# ✅ Good: Parameterized queries
query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = %s"
cursor.execute(query, (user_input,))

XSS Prevention:

# ❌ Bad: Raw HTML
html = f"<div>{user_input}</div>"

# ✅ Good: Escape HTML
from html import escape
html = f"<div>{escape(user_input)}</div>"

Command Injection Prevention:

# ❌ Bad: Shell injection risk
os.system(f"ls {user_input}")

# ✅ Good: Use subprocess with list
import subprocess
subprocess.run(["ls", user_input])

Validate All Inputs

def validate_email(email):
    import re
    pattern = r'^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$'
    if not re.match(pattern, email):
        raise ValueError("Invalid email")
    return email

# Use validation
try:
    email = validate_email(user_input)
except ValueError:
    return "Please provide a valid email"

Access Control

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Define roles and permissions:

roles = {
    "admin": ["read", "write", "delete", "manage_users"],
    "editor": ["read", "write"],
    "viewer": ["read"]
}

# Check permission
if "write" not in user.permissions:
    return "Access denied"

Principle of least privilege

Avoid: Granting write/admin scopes on GitHub, Google, or Slack when the agent only reads data.

Prefer: Read-only connection scopes in Integrations, then add write scopes only when the agent must create or update resources.

Credentials

Store integration tokens in Integrations → [connection] setup — they are encrypted at rest. Never paste API keys into agent instructions or commit them to git.

Audit Logging

What to Log

Do log:

Authentication attempts
Permission checks
Data access
Configuration changes
Integration calls
Errors and exceptions

Don’t log:

Passwords or API keys
Credit card numbers
PII (unless necessary and encrypted)
Full request/response bodies

Log Format

import logging

logger.info({
    "event": "data_access",
    "user_id": user.id,
    "resource": "customer_data",
    "action": "read",
    "timestamp": "2026-04-02T10:15:23Z",
    "ip_address": request.ip,
    "result": "success"
})

Compliance

Your users may ask you to honor these rights:

Right to access data
Right to deletion
Right to portability
Right to rectification

To export or delete your organization’s data in Auteryn:

Export: the organization’s owner chooses Export data in Settings → Organization and downloads a zip of your files and data. It never contains passwords, tokens or Connection credentials. A closed organization cannot export, so export first. See Export your data.
Delete: the owner chooses Close organization in the same place. The organization can be reopened for 30 days, and its content is deleted after that. See Close your organization.
Delete without the 30-day wait: send a formal erasure request to privacy@auteryn.ai or support@auteryn.ai. The organization then cannot be reopened.
Delete one person’s account: that person chooses Delete my account in Account settings. See Delete your account.

Data Retention

When an organization is closed, its content is deleted on day 30: conversations, files, Library documents, Knowledge, memory, Agents, Skills, Loops, Voices and snapshots. People’s names, emails and sign-ins are deleted too.

Copies can remain for a short time after that:

Database backups: up to 7 days
Deleted files in cloud storage: up to 7 days
Service logs: up to 90 days
Error reports: per our error-tracking provider’s retention

The billing ledger and audit records are kept, with no name, email or IP address attached. Invoices are held by Stripe, our payment processor, and show the billing name and email. We keep the Stripe customer for tax records.

For other retention requirements, contact security@auteryn.ai.

Incident Response

Response Plan

Detect - Monitoring alerts on issue
Contain - Isolate affected systems
Investigate - Determine root cause
Remediate - Fix the issue
Recover - Restore normal operations
Review - Post-mortem and improvements

Emergency Contacts

Security issues: security@auteryn.ai
Critical bugs: support@auteryn.ai

Security Checklist

Before Deployment

Ongoing

Resources

Questions?

Is Auteryn SOC 2 compliant, or ready for HIPAA? Ask security@auteryn.ai for our current compliance status before you rely on either.
Where is data stored? Primarily in the United States. There is no EU or custom region today.
Can I use my own encryption keys? Customer-managed keys (BYOK) are available on an Enterprise contract.
How do I report a security issue? Email security@auteryn.ai. We aim to acknowledge reports within 2 business days.

View all FAQs →