Identity Management for Agentic AI: The new frontier of authorization, authentication, and security for an AI agent world
It tackles identity and security problems for stakeholders in AI agent development and deployment, but is incremental as it builds on existing protocols and frameworks.
This whitepaper addresses the urgent challenges in authentication, authorization, and identity management posed by the rise of AI agents, outlining existing resources and proposing a strategic agenda to secure future autonomous systems.
The rapid rise of AI agents presents urgent challenges in authentication, authorization, and identity management. Current agent-centric protocols (like MCP) highlight the demand for clarified best practices in authentication and authorization. Looking ahead, ambitions for highly autonomous agents raise complex long-term questions regarding scalable access control, agent-centric identities, AI workload differentiation, and delegated authority. This OpenID Foundation whitepaper is for stakeholders at the intersection of AI agents and access management. It outlines the resources already available for securing today's agents and presents a strategic agenda to address the foundational authentication, authorization, and identity problems pivotal for tomorrow's widespread autonomous systems.