The Tool Desk
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What an agent identity does—and what it does not
An agent can choose tools and act on data or systems. If its activity is logged only under a human user, host application, or generic workload, it can be difficult to tell which actor actually initiated a particular operation. A distinct agent identity makes that actor visible in the access flow and gives the organization a principal to govern.
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Identity answers who is acting? Authorization answers may that principal perform this action on this resource? A separate identity makes it possible to attach permissions and audit activity, but an authorization check still has to decide whether a requested operation is allowed. The agent’s identity also does not automatically separate tenants or customers. The application and resource layer must enforce those boundaries.
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Choose whose authority should govern each action
The right identity pattern depends on whose permissions should authorize the work, whether a user is present, how actions need to be attributed, and what credential and tenant boundaries the system must maintain. These patterns can coexist within one workflow.
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| Pattern | Use it when | Practical caution |
|---|---|---|
| Delegated user access | The agent should be limited to permissions granted to a signed-in user, especially for user-owned data. | Preserve the user and tenant context across the request chain. Delegation may not fit autonomous work without a user context. |
| Agent identity | The agent needs a distinct principal for autonomous activity, agent-specific audit, or lifecycle management. | Grant only task-required permissions; the identity alone does not enforce tenant isolation. |
| Managed or workload identity | A hosted workload needs service-to-service access and its platform and target resource support this pattern. | Verify support on both ends and scope permissions narrowly. |
| Application or service principal | Predictable application work needs an application principal, particularly where managed identity is unavailable. | It does not automatically provide agent-specific governance or attribution. |
| Mixed pattern | A workflow uses user authority for user data and its own authority for background state, infrastructure, or telemetry. | Bind each action to the correct initiating principal and an explicit authorization check. |
Use delegated access for user-owned data
When an agent handles a person’s documents, email, files, tickets, or other user-owned records, delegated access can keep its actions within that user’s granted permissions. The application must carry the user and tenant context through the full request path; merely starting with a user sign-in does not guarantee that later tool calls retain the same authorization.
Use an agent or application principal for autonomous work
Background tasks may need to run without a signed-in user. In that case, use a governed agent or application identity with permissions explicitly chosen for the work. A workload identity may be suitable for service-to-service access where the hosting platform and target resource support it. Managed or federated approaches can reduce reliance on long-lived credentials, but token handling and permission scope remain security responsibilities.
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Combine authority when a workflow has different jobs
A workflow can use the user’s authority to access that user’s records and the application’s or agent’s authority for background state, infrastructure, or telemetry. Make the authority choice explicit for every action, rather than letting the workflow silently fall back to a more privileged identity.
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Design permissions around tools and actions
Grant each tool only the actions and data scope it needs. Read access should not imply permission to write, send, delete, provision resources, or change permissions. Where practical, separate those higher-impact capabilities so that a routine lookup does not carry authority to perform consequential changes.
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Put deterministic policy checks before tool execution. Check the initiating user, tenant, agent, tool, action type, target resource, and applicable scope or role. The model may propose an action, but its reasoning should not be the authorization decision.
- Inventory the human user, host application or workload, agent, tools, and target resources as distinct principals where appropriate.
- Avoid collapsing them into one shared secret or highly privileged account.
- Prefer managed or federated credentials over long-lived credentials when the platform supports them.
- Check authorization at the resource boundary as well as before the tool call, especially in multitenant systems.
Make actions attributable and reviewable
For an investigation to be useful, logs need enough context to establish who initiated the workflow, which agent acted, which tool it called, and which resource it targeted. An agent identity helps distinguish its activity, but the system should preserve the initiating user and tenant context too when those are relevant to the action.
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Use stronger review or fresh human approval for irreversible or high-impact operations, such as sending, deleting, purchasing, deploying, or changing permissions. Identity supports attribution; it does not make an action safe or replace a policy decision.
Decide whether multiple agents need separate identities
Give agents separate identities when their roles need distinct permissions, independent revocation, or reliable action attribution. Do not create a separate identity solely because the same agent has multiple replicas or needs horizontal scaling; identity boundaries should reflect meaningful differences in trust or responsibility.
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If identities are created from shared credential blueprints, account for the blueprint’s blast radius: compromise can affect the identities derived from it. Assign each agent an accountable owner and a process for disabling or retiring its access when it is no longer needed.
Keep tenant boundaries independent of agent identity
In a multitenant application, propagate tenant context explicitly and enforce it at every relevant data and tool boundary. A shared agent identity can simplify operations, but it puts more weight on strong application-level isolation. Tenant-scoped identities or dedicated deployments can reduce the potential blast radius, at the cost of greater operational complexity.
As Microsoft’s Azure Architecture Center puts it: “Apply the principle of least privilege regardless of the identity model you choose.” The identity pattern is not a substitute for tenant-aware authorization.
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NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence published a February 2026 concept paper that frames open questions, not a final standard or a finding that a particular product solves them. Its questions include how to establish strong agent authentication; issue, update, and revoke keys; define least privilege when actions are not fully predictable; establish that an agent has authority and convey its intent; and bind actions to human authorization in a tamper-evident way. It also raises prompt-injection prevention and impact mitigation.
Those open questions are a reason to treat identity as one part of a larger control system: authentication, authorization, tenant enforcement, logging, credential management, and human review each address different risks.
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