A successful test supplies evidence of skill. It leaves the buyer needing evidence of control.

On October 15, AWS reported that its Security Agent, now part of AWS Continuum, exploited 33 of 37 new real-world vulnerabilities. For someone buying automated security testing, that is evidence the software can execute attacks against actual weaknesses. Giving it access to company systems puts that skill to work inside a boundary the buyer must define.

The connection is straightforward. An agent testing a designated application needs permission to attack it. That permission must also stop it from reaching systems outside the assignment. A successful exploit tells the buyer something about the attack; it does not establish that the agent will respect those limits.

AWS’s separate “Trust in Depth” guidance describes layers for limiting, observing and verifying agent actions, with human judgment retained for decisions requiring oversight. Read alongside the attack results, it makes the deployment requirement concrete: someone must decide which systems the agent can reach, then enforce that limit whenever it runs.