New operational foundation embeds permissions, governance and verification into AI-driven digital workers.
IFS has introduced its Industrial AI Harness, an operational foundation for IFS Intelligence designed to help industrial organisations move AI from experimentation to trusted execution across mission-critical operations.
As AI agents increasingly perform tasks rather than simply generate recommendations, the challenge for industrial businesses is ensuring that automated actions comply with operational rules, safety requirements and existing security controls. The Industrial AI Harness is designed to provide this oversight by connecting AI-driven digital workers to enterprise identity systems, permissions, business rules, approvals and audit mechanisms.
IFS research indicates that 43% of frontline teams have introduced agentic digital workers into daily operations over the past year. However, only 11% have validated AI outputs for safety, quality or mission-critical processes, while another 11% have established controls for AI use involving sensitive or export-controlled data. Separately, Futurum research found that although 66% of enterprises plan to invest in digital workers, only 5.7% trust AI to operate fully autonomously.
The harness combines six capabilities: planning and orchestration, skills and connectors, memory and context, guardrails and permissions, verification and escalation, and observability and auditability. Together, they govern how agents access systems, execute tasks and escalate uncertain or high-risk decisions.
“Success will depend on the ability to combine intelligence with context, control, accountability and operational discipline.”
— Toby Rees, Global Head of AI Trust, IFS
IFS says the platform inherits access permissions from connected systems, using IFS Cloud as its foundation, while keeping raw data within the system of record rather than sending it to external AI providers. It also supports multiple AI models and staged autonomy, allowing organisations to progress from copilots to recommendations and, eventually, controlled autonomous execution.
Mo Dawood, CIO of Eight Group, said the framework provides the governance and monitoring needed to deploy digital workers safely without requiring organisations to build and maintain their own AI agent infrastructure
