Ownership should sit with the platform or identity governance function, with security setting policy and engineering supplying operational metadata. If ownership stays informal, no one can manage registration, retirement, or approval drift consistently. The important test is whether the registry has named accountability and an enforceable lifecycle, not just a list of tools.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
MCP registry ownership is not a naming exercise. It determines who can approve a new server, who can retire one, and who can stop drift when metadata, permissions, or tool scope changes. When that ownership is unclear, engineering teams tend to optimise for delivery speed while security teams assume someone else is handling approval, review, and revocation. The result is a registry that looks current but quietly accumulates stale entries, overbroad access, and unresolved exceptions.
This matters because MCP is often treated as infrastructure glue, yet the registry becomes the control plane for what tools and contexts an agent may reach. NHI Management Group research on The State of MCP Server Security 2025 found that 53% of MCP servers expose credentials through hard-coded values in configuration files, which shows how quickly registry gaps can become secret-handling failures. Current guidance also aligns with NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls, where accountable control ownership is essential for consistent enforcement. In practice, many security teams encounter registry sprawl only after a bad approval, not through intentional lifecycle governance.
How It Works in Practice
The cleanest operating model is shared ownership with a single accountable function. Platform or identity governance should own the registry as a system of record, while security defines the policy rules that decide what can be registered, what metadata is mandatory, and what conditions trigger review or retirement. Engineering supplies the operational facts: service name, environment, owner, tool inventory, secret source, scope, and change history. That separation keeps the registry authoritative without making security the day-to-day operator of the catalogue.
In practice, the registry should enforce a minimum control set at registration time, not after the fact. That usually includes:
- Named business and technical owners for every MCP server or tool entry
- Approval workflow tied to environment and risk tier
- Mandatory metadata for secrets, scopes, data access, and expiration dates
- Automated retirement when ownership is missing, stale, or no longer attested
- Periodic review against live telemetry so the registry reflects reality
For agentic and MCP-heavy environments, this logic should be paired with the expectations described in the OWASP Agentic Applications Top 10 and the OWASP Agentic AI Top 10, because tool sprawl and over-permissioned access become harder to see once autonomous workflows start chaining actions. The registry should also pull from runtime signals, not just ticketing data, so revoked tools, inactive servers, and hidden shadow registrations can be flagged for review. These controls tend to break down when multiple engineering groups register tools independently across shared environments because no one function can reconcile the source of truth.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter registry governance often increases coordination overhead, so organisations have to balance approval speed against the risk of unmanaged tool sprawl. There is no universal standard for registry ownership yet, but current guidance suggests that informal shared ownership fails fastest in fast-moving platform teams, especially where MCP servers are deployed per squad or per model.
One common edge case is a federated model. That can work when engineering teams own local entries and a central platform or identity team enforces policy, naming, and retirement rules. Another is a highly regulated environment where security insists on direct approval for every new server. That is defensible, but it often slows onboarding unless the workflow is automated and the criteria are explicit. A third edge case is temporary or experimental servers used for testing agents. These need the same lifecycle discipline as production entries because forgotten sandbox tools often become the easiest path for privilege drift.
NHI Management Group research on Massive Docker Hub Secrets Leak and Docker Hub Auth Secrets in Container Images reinforces the same pattern: unmanaged configuration becomes a security problem long before a formal incident ticket appears. The practical test is simple: if the registry cannot show who approved an MCP entry, when it expires, and who owns its removal, ownership is not actually established.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Agentic AI Top 10, CSA MAESTRO and OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST AI RMF and NIST CSF 2.0 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 | A2 | Registry governance is central to controlling agent tool access and approval drift. |
| CSA MAESTRO | GOV-02 | MAESTRO stresses accountable governance for agentic tool and workflow control. |
| NIST AI RMF | GOVERN | AI RMF governance requires clear accountability for autonomous system controls. |
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 | MCP registries manage identities, secrets, and access scope for non-human systems. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-4 | Least privilege and access management depend on authoritative registry records. |
Assign a single accountable owner for the MCP registry and its lifecycle decisions.
