Build an Intelligent MCP Gateway

Provide a single, secure and governed entry point for all AI agents to access the tools and context they need.

Why a secure MCP Gateway matters

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has revolutionized how AI agents interact with data. However, as organizations move from experimental scripts to production-grade AI, they encounter significant security bottlenecks:

Scalability

Manually managing API keys and credentials for dozens of MCP servers is unscalable and creates a massive credential-leak surface.

Visibility

Off-the-shelf gateways often lack the ability to bridge public AI clients with private cloud resources securely.

Consistency

Without a unified identity layer, AI agents cannot respect the specific permissions and roles of the human users they represent.

Without a secure gateway, your AI initiatives may remain siloed, insecure, and disconnected from your enterprise’s true source of truth.

Flexibility is the foundation of production AI

At Stacklok, we believe an MCP gateway shouldn’t be a “black box”. Our platform is designed as a flexible infrastructure layer that enables you to:

Unify

Provide a single, persistent endpoint for every user to access their permitted context.

Secure

Offload complex back-end authentication and authorization to a hardened control plane.

Enforce

Maintain strict network isolation between your LLM clients and sensitive internal data.

With Stacklok, you don’t just get a gateway; you get a secure, federated connection fabric to build on.

How to build a secure MCP Gateway

We’ve distilled the process into five high-impact steps

1

Establish federated identity

  • Integrate with your existing Identity Provider (IdP) to enable seamless, federated token exchange and tie every AI agent action to a verified user identity.

Stacklok Advantage

We handle complex token exchanges and session management, ensuring that “Agent A” only sees what “User A” is allowed to see.

2

Implement a single entry point

  • Consolidate fragmented MCP server URLs into one unified gateway endpoint to simplify client configuration for developers and AI tools.

Stacklok Advantage

Our architecture allows for a single, stable endpoint that dynamically routes requests to any number of back-end MCP servers.

3

Aggregate tools

  • Expose only the tools that each agent actually needs, reducing the attack surface, cutting cognitive load and improving model performance.

Stacklok Advantage

Stacklok has built tool selection evaluation frameworks and has proven more effective at tool selection than frontier models.

4

Optimize token usage

  • Compress tool definitions and filter all unnecessary tool descriptions out of your context window to reduce input token usage by more than 50%.

Stacklok Advantage

Stacklok’s platform includes an ‘MCP Optimizer’ capability that you can simply toggle on to immediately slash token usage.

5

Monitor and audit every request

  • Capture full-stack telemetry on every MCP call, tracking which user, agent, and tool accessed what data for a complete audit trail.

Stacklok Advantage

We provide deep observability into the intent of the request, not just the traffic, to detect and block anomalous agent behavior in real-time.

Best practices for MCP Gateway architecture

Do

  • Use federated identity to ensure “identity-aware” tool calls.
  • Implement granular RBAC to prevent over-permissioned agents.
  • Maintain a single endpoint to simplify the “last mile” connection to AI clients.

Don’t

  • Hard-code API keys into MCP server configurations.
  • Allow AI agents to bypass enterprise network security policies.
  • Rely on “standard” gateways that don’t support back-end auth flows.

Stacklok enablement path

We ensure your MCP Gateway is built to your spec, so you have full visibility and control, not a black box. Stacklok offers:

  • Architecture Advisory: Design your federated identity and network isolation strategy.
  • Implementation Support: Set up your custom gateway and connect internal data sources.
  • Identity Integration: Automate token exchange and RBAC mapping for your specific IdP.
  • One-Click Client Connectivity: Integrate with Cursor, Claude, and custom-built enterprise agents.