What are Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers?

MCP servers enhance your workflows by standardizing how LLMs access and interact with data, offering several key advantages for security and efficiency:

• Centralized and federated data access: Instead of AI applications directly accessing sensitive data, MCP servers centralize data access, handling authentication, authorization, dynamic data masking, and data retrieval based on the MCP protocol. For enterprises with fragmented data, an MCP server can act as a semantic data layer, providing a unified interface to disparate systems. This ensures only necessary and permitted data is accessed and simplifies AI agent development by allowing an AI application to connect to a single MCP server that orchestrates data retrieval from underlying systems.
• API and external service integration: MCP servers can act as secure gateways to internal and external APIs, handling authentication, formatting, and tokenization. This allows AI applications to easily incorporate external data without dealing with the intricacies of each individual API, all while maintaining a crucial security layer.
• Domain-specific information exposure: MCP servers can provide access to curated datasets, enabling AI applications to operate with a richer understanding of specific domains, leading to more accurate and contextual responses, all while enforcing data governance policies.
• Enforcing data privacy and compliance: By centralizing data access through MCP servers, organizations can enforce data governance policies, including data masking, tokenization, audit logging, and guardrailing data access from unauthorized users. This significantly reduces the risk of sensitive data leaking into AI models.

Potential pitfalls and how to avoid them

While MCP servers offer significant benefits, their nascent nature and the expanded attack surface they introduce necessitate a cautious approach to security:

• Credential security: Credentials can be inadvertently stored in local files or passed around in non-secure communication channels, making them vulnerable to exposure.
  • Avoidance: Always store and handle credentials safely, utilizing robust credential vaults. Leveraging OAuth 2.0-based authentication, if supported by MCP servers, is the optimal approach as it avoids direct credential storage.
• Transport security: Communication protocols like stdio” on local machines can become a threat vector if the computer is compromised. Persistent connections using the sse” protocol could also overwhelm server resources.
  • Avoidance: We recommend using streamable-http” as a standard for MCP communication. Crucially, always use HTTPS for all communication to prevent traffic interception and ensure data integrity.
• Trustworthiness of MCP server vendors: The source from which an MCP server is published could be compromised or spoofed, leading to the download of malicious software.
  • Avoidance: Always validate the legitimacy of the source where you download the MCP server. Rely on reputable vendors and official distribution channels.
• Permissions creep: If an MCP server requires access to internal data systems, there’s a risk of privileged escalation, potentially exposing users to over-provisioned data access.
  • Avoidance: Give careful consideration to permissions. Ensure that proper native role-based access control (RBAC) mechanisms in the data systems are followed, and the MCP server is configured to adhere to the same or more restrictive permissions. Implement the principle of least privilege.
• Environmental exposure: The environment where the MCP server runs can be a potential attack vector. Running MCP servers on local or unisolated machines increases the potential attack surface.
  • Avoidance: Deploy MCP servers in isolated and secure environments, such as dedicated virtual machines, containers, or cloud-managed services with robust network segmentation and security controls.
• Code Vulnerabilities: Closed-source MCP servers from less reputable vendors could harbor hidden code vulnerabilities.
  • Avoidance: When dealing with closed-source software, sandboxes provide a crucial layer of security, allowing for safe and controlled testing and analysis before implementation. If you opt for open-source MCP servers, take advantage of the ability to scan the code for vulnerabilities and conduct thorough security reviews.