Security architecture guide

AI agent identity and authorization for enterprise workflows

Design agent identity, delegation, workload authorization, scoped tool access, credential boundaries, approvals, and evidence for enterprise AI workflows.

How BlueBear handles the work

Do not treat the agent name as identity

Resolve the authenticated actor, tenant, workspace, agent definition and workflow version independently. A prompt claim or display name is not an authorization credential.

Evidence: Authenticated subject plus tenant, workspace, agent, and workflow identifiers

Authorize capabilities, not broad access

Evaluate the MCP connection, tool, action class, resource, scope, budget, and approval requirement for each consequential action.

Evidence: Requested capability, effective policy, allow or deny result, and reason

Keep credentials at the execution boundary

Resolve the approved connector credential only after policy permits the action. Return the scoped result rather than exposing a reusable bearer token to model context.

Evidence: Credential reference, audience, expiry, execution receipt, and redaction state

Preserve delegation and human decisions

Retain who delegated work, which authority the agent exercised, where approval changed the plan, and which downstream outcome was accepted.

Evidence: Delegation chain, approval event, tool receipt, and outcome correlation

From request to inspectable outcome

  1. Authenticate

    Resolve the human or service subject and its tenant boundary.

  2. Contextualize

    Attach the workspace, agent, workflow version, resource, and requested action.

  3. Authorize

    Evaluate policy, scope, budget, credential, and approval requirements.

  4. Record

    Correlate the decision, execution receipt, human intervention, and outcome.

Primary sources