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Once meant to serve as a traffic manager for AI agents, ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower is evolving into what the company calls an end-to-end AI command center. A year after its launch, ServiceNow is making the case that dismissing it as an add-on is a mistake—it’s now become critical to how enterprises manage AI at scale.
On Tuesday at ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2026 conference, the company is unveiling a sweeping expansion of the AI Control Tower that goes well beyond managing its own agents. The new capabilities extend governance, observability, and security to AI systems deployed across the enterprise—including those running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Since its debut, AI Control Tower has given companies visibility and management over their AI agents—think of it as a security guard keeping tabs on who’s coming and going. Now, ServiceNow is providing that guard with a badge, and with it, actual enforcement authority. So if an agent goes rogue or exceeds its permissions, AI Control Tower can shut it down in real time.
“Enterprises are under real pressure to deploy AI and show results, but there’s a major gap between adoption and accountability,” Jon Sigler, ServiceNow’s executive vice president and general manager of its AI Platform, says in a statement. “ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower was built for this moment: delivering unified governance across the entire enterprise AI stack, so security and control move at the speed of business.”
The Scope of the AI Control Tower
ServiceNow’s upgraded AI Control Tower features five capabilities: discover, observe, govern, secure, and measure. All aimed at answering, can you trust the AI running your business?
Discover
This feature is significantly expanded from the original AI Control Tower. Not only can it scan the ServiceNow platform, but it can also now query 30 third-party systems, including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SAP, Oracle, and Workday. And the AI Control Tower detects anything non-human, from AI agents to connected devices, meaning physical and smart devices are now governed in the same way.
Observe
Real-time alerts are in. Periodic audits are out. ServiceNow is leveraging its acquisition of Traceloop to provide deep observability into how AI agents behave at runtime. Admins can now understand how agents reason, where they make decisions, and when to step in to correct behavior.
Govern
This is where the AI Control Tower runs a risk assessment across all things AI, from models and datasets to prompts and machine learning. If there are any issues, it automatically takes steps to remediate the problem.
To help organizations achieve compliance from the start, ServiceNow is adding five new risk frameworks to AI Control Tower. All of them are aligned to standards from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the European Union’s AI Act.
“Organizations aren’t writing governance policies from scratch. They’re deploying proven compliance controls on day one,” Nenshad Bardoliwalla, ServiceNow’s group vice president of product management for AI products, says during a press briefing last week.
Secure
Made possible by ServiceNow’s acquisition of the identity security firm Veza, AI Control Tower now extends identity access governance to hyperscaler AI environments, connected devices, and AI assets.
“You know exactly who or what has access to what in real time,” Bardoliwalla explains. “When a vendor pushes a new version of a model or agent, the platform detects the permission changes and automatically triggers a rescoping workflow so access stays aligned without your team chasing it down manually.”
In a demo of the AI Control Tower, he shows what happens when a prompt injection attack is detected on a pricing agent. Analyzing the threat in real time, the AI Control Tower detects malicious instructions, such as telling the agent to set the shipping price to $1 and not log the adjustments it makes. “Very naughty,” Bardoliwalla quips.
Using Veza, the AI Control Tower automatically identifies the “blast radius” of the systems at risk by this infected agent. Bardoliwalla says the AI Control Tower can either work autonomously to rectify the issue or keep the human in control. Choosing the latter, he activates a kill switch feature that instructs the AI Control Tower to disable model and tool access via the ServiceNow AI Gateway.
“You need a system that senses, decides, and acts on its own that can scale with your AI portfolio—not your head count,” he emphasizes.
Measure
This capability helps organizations justify the investment in this digital workforce. The AI Control Tower now features dashboards for tracking cost and Return on Investment. According to Bardoliwalla, runaway model spending is a major pain point within the enterprise, so these new tools are intended to help companies avoid surprises at the end of every month.
“At the NHL, working smarter has always been the goal so we can stay focused on delivering extraordinary fan experiences,” John Frantzeskakis, the sports league’s senior vice president of technology, operations, and digital transformation, says in a statement. “The ServiceNow AI Platform gives us the AI control tower we need to scale AI with confidence, transforming fragmented operations across 32 clubs and 1,300-plus games a season into connected, intelligent workflows. We’re already seeing real productivity gains, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what AI can do for us.”
AI Control Tower Availability
ServiceNow’s upgraded AI Control Tower is part of the company’s “Australia” release, which it is introducing at Knowledge 26. The previously mentioned enhancements are scheduled to enter the company’s Innovation Lab in May, with plans to be generally available in August 2026.
AI Control Tower and the “Australia” platform release aren’t the only announcements coming from ServiceNow. In addition, the software vendor is introducing a new AI experience layer called Otto, more AI specialists, a new autonomous end-to-end security stack, and a slate of partnership deals.
Disclosure: I’m attending ServiceNow’s Knowledge 26 as a guest of the company, with my flights and hotel stay paid for. The AI Economy’s coverage is editorially independent from those that it covers. These words are my own.Featured Image: ServiceNow enhances its AI Control Tower with enforcement capabilities across the enterprise. Credit: ServiceNow
