Win: Phase 9 — Security Agent with 100× Performance Margin

Date: November 8, 2025 Phase: 9 — Sentinel Security Agent Status: ✅ PRODUCTION-READY

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What We Proved

Orion Alliance achieved P50 latency of 0.102ms — 100× faster than the 10ms target.

In Phase 9, we deployed Sentinel, a zero-trust security agent that validates:

Permissions — Agent actions require explicit role grants (RBAC)

Signatures — Cryptographic verification of agent identity

Rate limits — Per-agent throttling to prevent abuse

Audit logging — Every action logged to Chronicler for forensics

Results:

P50 latency: 0.102ms (target: <10ms, margin: 100×) ✅

P95 latency: 0.205ms (target: <20ms, margin: 100×) ✅

Zero unauthorized actions — All policy violations blocked ✅

100% audit coverage — Every action logged via Chronicler ✅

Performance optimizations:

Parallel policy checks (permissions + signatures + rate limits)

Fast-path LRU cache for role lookups

Async logging (non-blocking critical path)

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5-Minute Verification

Anyone can reproduce these results in under 5 minutes:

Prerequisites

git clone https://github.com/Orion-Alliance/orion-alliance-ai.git
cd orion-alliance-ai
pnpm install

Step 1: Run the Performance Harness

pnpm run sentinel:perf

Expected output:

✓ Iterations: 10,000
✓ P50 latency: 0.102ms
✓ P95 latency: 0.205ms
✓ Overhead: <1% of total request time
✓ Proof artifact: reports/sentinel/perf-2025-11-08.json

Step 2: Inspect the Proof Artifact

cat reports/sentinel/perf-2025-11-08.json

Key metrics in artifact:

`p50LatencyMs`: 0.102

`p95LatencyMs`: 0.205

`totalChecks`: 10000

`deniedActions`: [list of blocked unauthorized attempts]

Step 3: Run the Test Suite

pnpm test src/agents/sentinel/

Expected:

All policy violations correctly denied

All authorized actions allowed

All actions logged to Chronicler

Step 4: View the Dashboard

# Import dashboard into Grafana
cat dashboards/grafana/sentinel-perf.json

Panels:

Sentinel latency (p50/p95/p99)

Denied actions per minute

Policy check breakdown (permissions/signatures/rates)

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Artifacts

| Artifact | Location | Description |

--------------------------------- Proof JSON`reports/sentinel/perf-2025-11-08.json`Performance validation with p50/p95 latency Grafana Dashboard`dashboards/grafana/sentinel-perf.json`Real-time performance and security metrics Sentinel Agent`src/agents/sentinel/`Policy engine + middleware + guards Performance Harness`tools/sentinel-perf.mjs`Reproducible latency benchmarking CI Performance Gate`.github/workflows/sentinel-perf.yml`Automated regression testing Documentation`docs/sentinel.md`Architecture, policy syntax, examples | PR | #74 | Merged implementation |

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Why This Matters

For Engineers:

Zero-trust architecture for autonomous agents

Observable security metrics (denied actions, policy violations)

<1% performance overhead (negligible impact on user experience)

For Security:

Every agent action requires explicit permission (deny-by-default)

Cryptographic signature verification (prevents impersonation)

Full audit trail via Chronicler (forensics + compliance)

For Open Source:

Reference implementation of agent security patterns

Extensible policy engine (add custom rules)

Apache 2.0 licensed

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Policy Example

// src/agents/sentinel/policy.ts


export const agentPolicies: Policy[] = [
  {
    agent: 'orchestrator',
    actions: ['route_request', 'track_cost'],
    conditions: { requireSignature: true, rateLimit: 1000 }
  },
  {
    agent: 'chronicler',
    actions: ['log_event', 'read_logs'],
    conditions: { requireSignature: true, rateLimit: 10000 }
  }
]

How it works: 1. Agent attempts action → Sentinel intercepts 2. Parallel checks: Permission? Signature valid? Under rate limit? 3. If all pass → Allow + log to Chronicler 4. If any fail → Deny + log violation

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Next Steps

✅ Phase 9 complete — Sentinel in production 🚀 Phase 9.5 — Readiness docs + SLO tracking + IR playbook 📊 Phase 10 — Multi-modal routing (vision + audio)

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See more wins →

Contact

- GitHub: @orion-architect

Repo: Orion-Alliance/orion-alliance-ai

License: Apache 2.0

Tags: `security` `zero-trust` `rbac` `agent-governance` `performance`