Zep — governance posture
https://www.getzep.com/product/agent-memory/
Bi-temporal knowledge graph preserves full lineage of every stored fact — every memory write traceable and auditable by graph schema, not bolted-on logging. SOC 2 Type II; HIPAA BAA available; BYOK + VPC-isolated deployment for data residency.
At a glance
- Type
- Bi-temporal KG = structural provenance
- Tier
- T1
- Created
- 2023 (Zep AI founded 2023; YC W24; bi-temporal governance posture described in product from 2024)
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS
- License
- not applicable — not OSS
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo
- Pricing
- free: 2500 messages/mo; paid: $1.25/1000 messages; Enterprise: custom HIPAA BAA VPC
- Funding
- $500K pre-seed (YC W24 March 2024); total ~$3.5M
Taxonomy
- storage
- graph
- retrieval
- graph-traversal
- persistence
- long-term
- update
- append-only
- unit
- fact
- governance
- auditable
- conflict
- bi-temporal
When to use
Optimised for: governance + compliance + audit + adversarial hardening
Anti-fit: not for hobbyist / non-production use cases
Pros & cons
Pros
Bi-temporal graph IS the governance story — every memory write traceable by graph schema, not bolted-on logging; SOC 2 Type II + HIPAA + BYOK.
Cons
Governance is a property of Zep's architecture, not a separate product — you don't get the governance without adopting Zep itself.
Claims & capabilities
Provenance is structural. Threat model: exfiltration, HIPAA/SOC 2 compliance, audit trail gaps, explainability failures.
Technical surface
- API surface
- REST (typical SaaS REST + first-party SDK pattern; see vendor docs for language coverage)
- Backend storage
- Postgres + Neo4j
- Deployment
- SaaS cloud; self-hosted (Graphiti OSS); Enterprise: BYOC VPC
- Embedding model
- multiple supported
- Multi-tenancy
- namespace
- MCP
- native (first-party) — Graphiti MCP
- A2A
- no data — searched getzep.com/product/agent-memory, help.getzep.com, docs.getzep.com; A2A protocol not advertised
- OpenTelemetry
- no data — searched getzep.com/product/agent-memory, help.getzep.com, docs.getzep.com; OpenTelemetry export not advertised
Similar systems
Other memory governance, privacy & safety in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Acuvity (now Proofpoint) T1
Runtime enforcement targeting memory poisoning, unauthorised execution, identity spoofing per the OWASP LLM threat list. Visibility/control over MCP servers and locally-installed AI tools — the infrastructure layer where memory is most exposed.
- Enkrypt AI T1
Applies guardrails at three points: (1) before write to vector DB, (2) before query reaches embedding model, (3) before response. Detects malicious instructions in stored memory before retrieval; scans for PII/PHI in/out. Text + image + voice modalities.
- HiddenLayer AISec Platform 2.0 T1
Targets the supply-chain / lineage layer rather than runtime memory writes. Model Genealogy tracks training/fine-tuning/modification history — catches poisoning baked in during training. AIBOM generates auditable inventory of model components + datasets. Runtime layer also monitors agentic workflows.
- Lakera Guard / Lakera Red T1
Screens every prompt, response, and retrieved document for indirect prompt injection — primary vector for memory poisoning. Treats memory as untrusted: anything written to or read from memory is adversarial until proven clean. Lakera Red provides "Agent Breaker" gamified red-teaming.
- Mem0 Security / OpenMemory T1
Commercial Mem0 ships SOC 2 / HIPAA, zero-trust access controls, BYOK encryption, real-time monitoring, audit logs, workspace governance as defaults. OpenMemory is the local self-hosted variant (Docker + FastAPI + Postgres + Qdrant) for privacy-first deployments.
- Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit T2
Cross-Model Verification Kernel (CMVK) requires majority-voting agreement across multiple model calls before a memory-influenced action. Agent OS package intercepts every action (memory included) at sub-millisecond latency. MIT licensed.
Related systems
References (1)
- Neo4j depends on at runtime — backend-storage cell: Postgres + Neo4j