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Keep a user’s password, browser session and reusable broad-access tokens away from the agent. Instead, use a trusted broker to validate the user and the agent, apply policy, and obtain or issue access limited to Microsoft Graph and the operations required. Depending on the design, the agent may receive a constrained, short-lived token—or a broker may keep tokens out of the agent’s hands and call Graph on its behalf. A brokered token is not automatically a Microsoft Graph token: its audience, claims, scopes and validation rules must match the downstream resource.
Choose whose authority the Graph request uses
Start by deciding whether the task should run under a person’s authority or under an application’s authority. Microsoft Graph treats these as distinct authorization models, not interchangeable ways to obtain the same access. In delegated access, both the app and the signed-in user must be authorized; the granted delegated scopes limit what the app can do for that user, and the user’s own rights to the resource remain relevant. In app-only access, the application acts as itself and must have the required application permissions. Microsoft recommends requesting only the least-privileged permissions the app needs (Microsoft Graph authentication and authorization basics).
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| Decision point | Delegated access | App-only access |
|---|---|---|
| Human present | A signed-in user authorizes the app’s action. | No user needs to be present for the application to act. |
| Authority checked | The app’s delegated permissions and the user’s resource permissions both matter. | The application’s granted application permissions govern access. |
| Permission model | Delegated scopes describe what the app may do on the user’s behalf. | Application permissions describe what the app may do as itself. |
| Useful when | The action should reflect a particular user’s access. | The task is unattended automation intended to run under application authority. |
Do not use app-only permissions as a shortcut when the action is supposed to be constrained by a particular user. Conversely, delegated access is not a substitute for an unattended application identity when no user is meant to authorize the operation.
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A broker should preserve who authorized an operation and which agent initiated it. Ping Identity’s PingFederate guide illustrates a delegated token with sub identifying the human, act.sub identifying the agent, scope representing granted operations and aud identifying the intended resource (Ping Identity’s delegated-access guide). These fields express useful design dimensions—subject, actor, scope and audience—not a universal claim contract. The receiving service must support and validate the token format and claims actually issued in your deployment.
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This actor chain matters for authorization and accountability: a record that identifies only a user can obscure which agent performed an operation, while one that identifies only an agent can lose the human context behind delegated access. Confirm how the resource server and your audit systems consume these identities rather than assuming that adding claims alone makes Graph interpret them as intended.
Decide whether the agent should see any access token
“Never hold your tokens” is best understood as a rule against giving an agent reusable user credentials, session cookies, refresh tokens or broad user tokens—not as a claim that every architecture can operate without an access token anywhere. Ping Identity’s example has the agent receive a constrained delegation token; another design can keep the token in a trusted broker and have that broker make the downstream request. These are different trust boundaries. Choose deliberately, and do not let a short-lived token become a long-lived credential through logging, caching or storage.
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- Agent receives a constrained token: Use this only when the agent runtime is allowed to handle that token. Limit it to the intended resource and required operations, keep its lifetime short, and prevent exposure through prompts, traces and logs.
- Broker retains the token: The agent requests an operation from the broker, which applies policy and calls Graph. This can keep bearer tokens out of the agent context, but the broker becomes a security-critical component that must protect tokens and enforce authorization on each request.
Ping Identity’s guide describes audience restriction and a short-lived delegated token. Its sample token expires five minutes after issuance; that is an illustrative value in the guide, not a universal Microsoft Graph requirement or a recommended lifetime for every deployment. Microsoft Foundry’s agent identity documentation separately says that a downstream token’s audience must match the resource identifier and lists https://graph.microsoft.com for Microsoft Graph (Microsoft Foundry agent identity concepts). Verify the audience and accepted token contract for the actual resource and tenant.
What a PingFederate-to-Graph broker flow must establish
Ping Identity documents an OAuth 2.0 token-exchange approach in PingFederate using delegation claims. Microsoft documents Graph authorization models and its own Microsoft Entra agent identity flows. Those sources do not establish a turnkey PingFederate-to-Graph integration or guarantee that a particular PingFederate token will be accepted by Graph. Treat the following as architecture decisions to validate in the target deployment, not as a click-by-click configuration recipe.
- Authenticate and identify the request. Establish the user context where the task is delegated and authenticate the calling agent to the broker. Do not treat an agent-supplied identity claim as proof of identity.
- Apply issuance policy. Decide whether this agent may perform this operation for this user and whether the request should be denied or narrowed. PingFederate token authorization can evaluate mapped user attributes and runtime event context and conditionally allow or deny token issuance, according to the PingFederate Server 12.2 token authorization documentation. Issuance policy does not replace authorization checks by the downstream service.
- Exchange or obtain a token for the correct resource. Ensure the resulting token is intended for Microsoft Graph rather than for the broker or another API. Confirm the accepted audience, grant, token type and claim contract against the actual Graph and identity-provider configuration.
- Restrict permissions. Request only the delegated scopes or application permissions needed for the operation. For delegated access, preserve the user context and ensure the user has the relevant resource rights; for app-only access, use the application’s authority only when that is the intended model.
- Validate at the resource boundary. The party accepting the token must validate its issuer, audience, lifetime, signature and applicable authorization claims according to the supported configuration. Do not assume that a token exchange or issuance decision makes a downstream validation step unnecessary.
- Record the actor chain safely. Keep enough information to distinguish the human subject from the agent actor in appropriate audit records. Avoid recording bearer tokens or other reusable secrets.
Use supported identity protocols and minimize credentials
Microsoft advises using approved SDKs for agent OAuth protocols because implementing the protocols manually is complex and error-prone. Its agent protocol guidance also cautions against client secrets for production agent identity blueprints and identifies managed identities or certificates as alternatives (Microsoft Entra agent authentication protocols). Microsoft Foundry describes managed identity federation as a way to avoid storing a blueprint secret and recommends it for production in its documented setup. These are Microsoft recommendations in their stated contexts, not evidence that every option is supported identically in every PingFederate or Entra deployment.
| Credential approach | Operational consideration | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Client secret | Requires secure storage and rotation; a leaked secret can enable use of the associated client identity. | Microsoft cautions against client secrets for production agent identity blueprints. |
| Certificate | Requires certificate provisioning, secure private-key handling and lifecycle management. | Microsoft identifies certificates as an alternative to production client secrets in its agent identity guidance. |
| Managed identity or managed identity federation | Can avoid maintaining a stored blueprint secret in the documented Foundry setup. | Availability and configuration depend on the deployment; verify support for the selected identity and broker arrangement. |
Microsoft Entra’s agent identity documentation describes its own multi-step token exchange framework. It can inform how to think about agent identity and downstream audiences, but it does not by itself specify a PingFederate deployment or demonstrate interoperability with a particular Graph configuration. Validate supported grants, versions, consent, permissions, claims and audience values in the tenant you intend to use.
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Validate the design before production
- Confirm whether each operation needs delegated user authority or application authority.
- Verify that the token audience is the intended resource and that the downstream service accepts the issuer and token contract.
- Check that permissions are no broader than the operation requires and, for delegated actions, that user resource rights constrain access as expected.
- Test denial cases as well as successful requests: unauthorized agent, missing user permission, insufficient scope and invalid audience should not turn into a broader fallback grant.
- Ensure tokens and secrets are not exposed in agent prompts, application logs, telemetry, caches or error messages.
- Review audit output to confirm it preserves both the human context and the agent actor where the design requires both.
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