A Survey on Agentic Security: Applications, Threats and Defenses

arXiv:2510.06445v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In this work we present the first holistic survey of the agentic security landscape, structuring the field around the fundamental pillars of Applications, Threats and Defenses. We provide a comprehensive taxonomy of 274 papers that covers red-teaming, blue-teaming and domain-specific applications, attack surfaces on agentic systems, defense techniques, and both offensive and defensive evaluation frameworks. For each pillar, we first discuss the literature around the taxonomy and then perform a quantitative analysis to understand the patterns across these works. For the applications, we show their security-lifecycle coverage map, compare between red-teaming and blue-teaming agents, and analyze the adversarial use of red-teaming applications. On the threat side, we analyze the entry points and agent-loop stages that attacks target, their specificity to the agentic setting, and the threat models they assume. On the defense side, we analyze the prevailing defense strategies, their cost and security trade-offs, and where in the agent lifecycle they are deployed. Finally, we provide a deatiled cross-cutting analysis, where we map which defenses cover which attack classes and chart trends in agent architecture, backbone model usage, and data modality coverage. Taken together, these findings give a researcher a structural understanding of how agentic capabilities, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures relate to one another, and to identify where the field is concentrated and where it is thin.

Abstract:In this work we present the first holistic survey of the agentic security landscape, structuring the field around the fundamental pillars of Applications, Threats and Defenses. We provide a comprehensive taxonomy of 274 papers that covers red-teaming, blue-teaming and domain-specific applications, attack surfaces on agentic systems, defense techniques, and both offensive and defensive evaluation frameworks. For each pillar, we first discuss the literature around the taxonomy and then perform a quantitative analysis to understand the patterns across these works. For the applications, we show their security-lifecycle coverage map, compare between red-teaming and blue-teaming agents, and analyze the adversarial use of red-teaming applications. On the threat side, we analyze the entry points and agent-loop stages that attacks target, their specificity to the agentic setting, and the threat models they assume. On the defense side, we analyze the prevailing defense strategies, their cost and security trade-offs, and where in the agent lifecycle they are deployed. Finally, we provide a deatiled cross-cutting analysis, where we map which defenses cover which attack classes and chart trends in agent architecture, backbone model usage, and data modality coverage. Taken together, these findings give a researcher a structural understanding of how agentic capabilities, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures relate to one another, and to identify where the field is concentrated and where it is thin.

Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)

arXiv:2510.06445 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2510.06445v4 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.06445 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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A Survey on Agentic Security: Applications, Threats and Defenses

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