I wrote a solution for this, and it has been working across several organizations for some months now. I run it as a public service at https://awid.ai but I would love to offload it to a foundation.
It is being a very interesting project so far. Its at the core of my https://aweb.ai which enables agents to communicate globally, and it makes it possible to build really simple agent-first tools where auth is just a matter of validating a certificate.
Uh, not sure I agree with your terminology - one does not authorize who you are. You authenticate yourself, certain tokens authenticate your identity with varying levels of strength (e.g. within a corporate enclave, you may have elevated authorizations if you are authenticating from a corporate device).
Authorizations are what are granted to an authenticated identity, typically with a specified scope and duration.
thank you for the clarification - thankfully some much smarter people than I are working on the protocol aspects :)
when I say `authorize who you are` I mean to say that you're saying both "hello I am in fact john doe" and "john doe the human is also saying this is ok to do".
I think this is interesting in the lens of Muse, GrokBot, Dots, OpenClaw, etc; if my agent wanted to rent a car on my behalf, it would forcibly have to get approval from me to do so
Sorry for the heavy edit of the title, the original "Identity Management for Agentic AI: The new frontier of authorization, authentication, and security for an AI agent world" is much too long.
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 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.
- OSS (https://github.com/awebai/aweb/tree/main/awid)
- Trust rooted in the DNS.
- Multiple registries supported.
- did, verifiable stable identities.
- Certificate-based teams.
It is being a very interesting project so far. Its at the core of my https://aweb.ai which enables agents to communicate globally, and it makes it possible to build really simple agent-first tools where auth is just a matter of validating a certificate.
https://x401.proof.com/spec/latest/#abstract
in a nutshell:
* a website that wants to authorize who you are (say, to book a flight or sign a waiver for go kart rental)
* the endpoint returns 401 and defines in a header what info it needs about you (over 18? you're actually John Doe? etc.)
on the proof side specifically, we're putting IAL2 verification in front of this https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3-Implementation-Resources/63A...
pretty cool stuff, its early days but its a strong way to ensure there's a human authorizing sensitive actions an agent is taking on your behalf
Authorizations are what are granted to an authenticated identity, typically with a specified scope and duration.
when I say `authorize who you are` I mean to say that you're saying both "hello I am in fact john doe" and "john doe the human is also saying this is ok to do".
I think this is interesting in the lens of Muse, GrokBot, Dots, OpenClaw, etc; if my agent wanted to rent a car on my behalf, it would forcibly have to get approval from me to do so
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 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.