#1173 - OIC 26.10 - MCP Gateway

Introduction

The MCP Gateway is a compelling new addition to the OIC Agentic toolkit. Released with 26.10, this gateway supports not just OIC based MCP servers, but also 3rd parties.

Please check out the excellent post from my colleague, Kishore, before continuing here. Kishore and his team have created a very compelling addition to our OIC Agentic AI Toolkit; well done, guys! 
Now that you have the intel, let's begin by exposing our 3 integrations below as Agent Tools. We also enable the Project as an MCP Server - 

MCP Gateway

Now to the MCP Gateway, let's add the MCP Server we just enabled - 

Step 1 is completed - we have included our OIC project MCP server definition in the context of MCP Gateway.

Let's look at the Security Policies we can apply.

Security Policies

With this initial release we support 2 policies - 

• PII Detection
• Tool filter

Let's check out PII Detection - 

There's a rich OOTB list, however, you can also add your own RegEx based pattern.

Note the 3 tabs - Detection, Enforcement and Action.

Detection is doing the actual work of detecting whether the payload contains an email address etc.  This work is done by OCI Gen AI service, so one needs to select an OCI compartment where this service is available.  

Back to the policy I chose; I can now specify how I want the policy applied - where and how.

Enforcement - this is the where. So where do I want to enforce the policy?

The options available are -

The Enforcement tab offers rich selection criteria; you choose what makes business sense to you.

Finally, the Redaction - here I define how I want to handle PII. 

Choices include - 

Again, we are offered a rich set of combinations.

I choose the following - 

At this stage, my Security Policy has been successfully configured; let's review my settings, before continuing -

Time to add the MCP Gateway - 

Note again, the optimal flexibility we are offered here. This is one of the hallmarks of our offering.

Activate - 

Click Run to get endpoint details -

 

Over to MCPJam - check out my intro post on MCPJam, if you're hearing about it for the first time.

Let's try out GET_CUSTOMER - 

Here's the customer row in the DB -

Back in OIC Project Observability -

the integration returns the email value and the gateway masks it.

Business Policies

I add the following policy - 

I add the customer, Cathal Brugha, to the DB -

Summa Summarum

This is a compelling addition to the OIC project toolkit. This gateway is not simply for OIC MCP servers but can be used with 3rd parties as well. It provides -

• identity and access control
• ability to cherry pick which tools are exposed
• ability to apply inbound/outbound policies
• OOTB auditing and observability

Please do take into account this is the initial release, so expect more functionality appearing in upcoming releases.

Cerevisia Aestiva

Today's beer is from Starnberg, the idyllic lakeside town, beside Munich -

On draught, this is a great summer beer; an optimal refreshing mix of malt and hops. At 4.8%, it's not the strongest, but the taste is still compelling. This is a very young brewery, founded in 2015; long may they continue! 

Sláinte is táinte.