watchdog agents

“Watchdog agents” at an API gateway are autonomous (or semi-autonomous) detection-and-response components that continuously observe gateway and adjacent security telemetry, decide whether risk has changed, and then enforce or orchestrate compensating controls—often in near real time—such as revoking credentials, quarantining a workload, applying dynamic throttles, or blocking anomaly-driven abuse. This idea maps cleanly onto modern zero trust thinking: the gateway acts as a policy enforcement point (PEP), while watchdog logic often plays part of the policy decision point (PDP) (or feeds it), enabling continuous verification and session termination when conditions change.

See also mermaid