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Walk the floor at any major security conference this year and you’ll hear the same word again and again: agentic. Every booth claims it. Every demo leans on it. The pitch is polished, the interfaces look sleek, and the answers come fast.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if the system can’t tell you whether an alert is real, still active, or actually matters, then it isn’t agentic at all. It’s just a mirror—repeating what other tools already said, without adding anything new.
That’s why ground truth is the dividing line: without it, “agentic” is just another marketing label. With it, a system has the raw material to move from describing work to actually doing it.
The Problem with Wrappers
Most of today’s so-called agentic tools are wrappers. They don’t see your environment directly—they just repackage what your SIEM, CSPM, or scanners already collected. A few API calls later, and the output looks fresh: a clean dashboard, natural-language summaries, maybe even a suggested next step.
The trouble is, wrappers can’t answer the questions that matter. Is this alert still live? Did the workload spin down five minutes ago? Has the risk grown since the ticket was created? Without that verification step, teams end up working off snapshots instead of reality.
That gap has real consequences. Analysts keep triaging issues that may already be resolved. Tickets pile up that point to stale findings. The backlog looks different, but it doesn’t get smaller. Wrappers create the appearance of progress without moving the work forward.
What “Ground Truth” Means in Security
Ground truth is the difference between believing a report and checking the facts yourself. In security, it means having direct visibility into what’s happening right now—not a delayed log entry, not a ticket filed yesterday, not a summary stitched together after the fact.
Think about runtime signals: which processes are spinning up or terminating, what containers are coming and going, which identities are assuming roles and touching production data. These are first-order observations of reality, not secondhand descriptions.
When a system has access to ground truth, it can do more than repeat alerts. It can verify whether an issue is real, see how it’s evolving, and show exactly where the risk is. Without that foundation, any claim of being “agentic” is built on sand.
Why Runtime = Ground Truth
Logs, CSPMs, and tickets all serve a purpose—but they’re secondhand. They capture what was recorded, often minutes, hours, or even days late. They live in Plato’s cave: they can describe the shadows on the wall, not the system itself.
Runtime is different. It’s the closest thing we have to truth in security. Runtime signals show the environment as it actually is: processes launching, containers being created or destroyed, credentials being assumed, network paths opening and closing. It’s the only layer that answers the questions wrappers can’t: Is this alert still active? Did the change we pushed actually take effect?
With runtime, context carries forward. An investigation builds, instead of resetting with every query. Fixes are validated before they’re suggested. Runtime provides the continuity and verification that transforms “agentic” from a buzzword into a working capability.
The Agentic Test: Can It Act Like a Teammate?
A real teammate doesn’t just repeat what you already know—they move the work forward. The same is true for agentic systems. Without runtime, they’re stuck summarizing. With runtime, they can finally start behaving like part of the team.
That means carrying an investigation across steps instead of resetting at every prompt. It means confirming whether an alert is still live before it eats up analyst hours. It means teeing up bounded, safe actions—like isolating a container or staging a remediation—so humans can focus on decisions instead of mechanics.
This is the test: does the system participate in the work, or does it just narrate it back to you? Only the first deserves to be called agentic.
Dig Deeper on Agentic Claims
Ground truth is the prerequisite for agency. Without it, “agentic AI” is just another label on top of recycled alerts. With it, systems can reason, persist, and act like real teammates—closing the loop instead of adding to the noise.
If you’re evaluating products that claim to be agentic, don’t stop at the demo. Ask where their signals come from. Ask if they can prove whether an alert is live, or whether a change reduced risk. If they can’t show ground truth, they can’t deliver agency.
We’ve put together a deeper dive on exactly this problem—and soon, we’ll be launching a practical framework for testing vendor claims, complete with a scoring rubric you can use in your next demo. Meanwhile, check out Jimmy Mesta’s webinar on why ground truth matters—you can catch it live on 9/30 or watch it on-demand here.
