[Openid-aiim] IAM needs for Agentic AI and Path Forward

Lombardo, Jeff jeffsec at amazon.com
Sun Jul 20 20:44:24 UTC 2025 

I think we can thank Ayesha for putting forward the idea of baes that can define the relation in between an human and an agent, an agent and a resource.

There is space for improvement on this first Draft for sure, Ayesha candidly opened her text and requested feedback from this group.

Maybe the best approach is to propose new formulation for the mental model and text description of it, with at heart to remind that this Community Group is here to expose and document the current state and what needs to be done for the best state with whatever exist today or need to be created tomorrow.

In this vein (pun intended), I think we should:
- comment wherever needed on Ayesha document to make it more robust
- start a new document on Agentic Assurance Levels

Jean-François “Jeff” Lombardo | Amazon Web Services

Architecte Principal de Solutions, Spécialiste de Sécurité
Principal Solution Architect, Security Specialist
Montréal, Canada
( +1 514 778 5565

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From: Openid-aiim <openid-aiim-bounces at lists.openid.net> On Behalf Of Tom Jones via Openid-aiim
Sent: July 20, 2025 10:29 PM
To: Eve Maler <eve at vennfactory.com>
Cc: Tom Jones <thomasclinganjones at gmail.com>; peace at acm.org; openid-aiim at lists.openid.net
Subject: RE: [EXT] [Openid-aiim] IAM needs for Agentic AI and Path Forward


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Those ideas are completely broken.
If an agent, on behalf of a legal person, is allowed to order and pay for goods, then a legal contract was created and satisfied.
Anything else is not agency.
So the question is, do we have an agent or not?
.https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/agent

Peace ..tom jones


On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 9:56 AM Eve Maler <eve at vennfactory.com<mailto:eve at vennfactory.com>> wrote:
Feeling philosophical today: Is there room to square this circle?

There’s an emerging field of relational AI (vs. transactional — behaviors vs. actions). I’ve been talking to the developer<https://kaystoner.substack.com> of a number of custom GPTs that are aligned with very precisely drawn personas — and, yes, have also been playing with some of them. The outputs are indeed variable but the behaviors are designed to provide certain kinds of interactive support. Their design also includes some guardrails and some level of transparency.

Maybe what needs to come first, before we can trust a high-autonomy-level transactional agent, is measurable behavioral alignment with their human delegator (Agentic Assurance Level? :-) ). Perhaps only then can we start to assess the alignment of any actions that agent takes.

(Human delegates are not immune to misalignment with their delegator, of course, which is why agency law and the concept of fiduciary duty exist. I doubt AI agents will win humanlike legal status any time soon, but if they are ever to get anywhere near it, they’ll need to solve these sorts of issues.)

Eve

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On Jul 19, 2025, at 12:33 PM, Tom Jones via Openid-aiim <openid-aiim at lists.openid.net<mailto:openid-aiim at lists.openid.net>> wrote:


non-deterministic agents do present serious challenges to trust, security, and governance. In domains like digital identity, law, finance, and public infrastructure, unpredictability isn't just inconvenient—it’s potentially unacceptable. Let’s break down why:

⚠️ Why Non-Determinism Breeds Unacceptability

  *   Inconsistent behavior: Agents that act differently under the same conditions can’t be reliably audited or certified.
  *   Untraceable outputs: It becomes hard to pinpoint cause, responsibility, or compliance status.
  *   Vulnerability to manipulation: Adversaries can exploit probabilistic logic to induce unwanted outcomes.
  *   Loss of control: Especially in systems involving user consent or legal transactions, determinism enables meaningful boundaries.
The above is what a bing bot thinks of this idea.  I agree with it.
Peace ..tom jones


On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 10:19 AM Ayesha Dissanayaka <ayshsandu at gmail.com<mailto:ayshsandu at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Tom,

Thank you for your input. Of course, defining an agent is a top priority when considering IAM. It's the very first term in the taxonomy document<https://github.com/openid/cg-ai-identity-management/blob/main/deliverable/taxonomy.md> that the CG is constructing. 😃

Major AI framework providers have their definitions for AI agents, as I tried to summarize here.<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PhWC4KRO00kOPUW113ldG06Vii5dZjW3ljiV1tA0GCc/edit?tab=t.1iyru8xdjt9u>. We can draw some inspiration from them when constructing a definition for the AI agents in the context of IAM for Agents.

On your suggestion for the agent definition, the term "consistent behavior" might not go well with an agent, as agents are, by design, undeterministic and dynamic. If you ask an agent to do the same thing twice, there is a fair chance that it will do the task differently, unlike a traditional application or a workload.


On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 12:19 AM Tom Jones <thomasclinganjones at gmail.com<mailto:thomasclinganjones at gmail.com>> wrote:
you talk about giving ai agents and id, but there appears to be no definition of what an agent must be to deserve an ID.
Let's do that  - how about this.

An agent is a persistent collection of software and language models together in a workload with a consistent behavior (identity) for the duration of the validity of an assigned Identifier.
An agent can be delegated authority by Entities, that is by named objects.


Peace ..tom jones


On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 10:49 AM Ayesha Dissanayaka via Openid-aiim <openid-aiim at lists.openid.net<mailto:openid-aiim at lists.openid.net>> wrote:
Hi All,

Thanks, everyone, for your comments on the thoughts on the doc. And I had a great time discussing this during the CG meeting yesterday. Following up on our discussion i<https://github.com/openid/cg-ai-identity-management/wiki/20250717-%E2%80%90-Meeting-notes:-July-17,-2025#ayeshas-agent-identity-discussion-iam-need-for-agentic-ai---brainstorming>n the last CG meeting, I am moving this conversation to email so that it's easier to comment and gather thoughts from everyone.  Please refer to this<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PhWC4KRO00kOPUW113ldG06Vii5dZjW3ljiV1tA0GCc/edit?tab=t.0> documen<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PhWC4KRO00kOPUW113ldG06Vii5dZjW3ljiV1tA0GCc/edit?tab=t.0>t for detailed information.


The complexity of AI-native applications, when considering GenAI,  has progressed in added stages of complexity :

  1.  Task-Specific AI: Simple applications using LLMs for specific tasks like text generation.

  1.  RAG-Enabled AI: Applications that can access and synthesize external knowledge bases.

  1.  Apps that include Agents: Applications where agents can make decisions and execute tasks on a user's behalf.

  1.  Agent Teammates: The current frontier, where agents act on their own accord and collaborate with humans in shared workflows.

This evolution presents exciting opportunities, but it also brings a new set of challenges, particularly in how we manage identity and access. To ensure we build a secure and trustworthy ecosystem for these agents, we need to establish a robust set of IAM best practices.

Here are some of the key requirements that we should be thinking about:

  *   Seamless Integration: Agents need to interact with existing systems, like those using OAuth, with minimal disruption.

  *   Flexible Action: Agents should be able to act on their own or securely on behalf of a user or another entity.

  *   Just-in-Time Permissions: To mitigate risks from the non-deterministic nature of agents, we need mechanisms for granting just-enough access, precisely when it's needed.

  *   Clear Accountability: There must be a designated responsible party for an agent's actions.

  *   Auditable Traceability: All agent actions should be traceable back to their identity and the delegating authority.

  *   Agent-Specific Controls: Resource servers may need to identify and apply specific controls for actions initiated by agents.

  *   Lifecycle Management: We need clear governance for the entire lifecycle of an agent, from onboarding to decommissioning.

This is a pivotal moment for us to lead the way in defining the standards and best practices that will shape the future of agentic AI. To get the ball rolling, let's consider a few key questions:

  1.  Where can we apply existing standards and best practices?

  1.  What are the novel problems that existing solutions can't address?

  1.  Where do we need to extend current standards or innovate?

  1.  How should an agent's identity be defined and structured?

  1.  Develop a shared vocabulary for scenarios, actors, and challenges.

     *   Happening at https://github.com/openid/cg-ai-identity-management/blob/main/deliverable/taxonomy.md as initiated at AIIM-CG

Please share your thoughts, any references, and any ideas you might have on the above.

Looking forward to continuing the discussion.


On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 10:04 PM Ayesha Dissanayaka <ayshsandu at gmail.com<mailto:ayshsandu at gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks, Alex, for the comments.

On Mon, Jul 7, 2025 at 8:41 PM Alex Babeanu <alex.babeanu at indykite.com<mailto:alex.babeanu at indykite.com>> wrote:
Added some comments to the doc, thanks for sharing Ayesha. This could serve as a starting point for discussion...
A side question, could we use a common share drive to such docs or material ?
Sure, if the CG has such a shared space, I can move the doc there.
Athul<mailto:atul at sgnl.ai>, do we have any such for the AIIM CG?


Cheers,

./\.

On Thu, Jul 3, 2025 at 10:56 AM Ayesha Dissanayaka <ayshsandu at gmail.com<mailto:ayshsandu at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi All,

It's great to be part of this exciting community to discuss IAM for the Agentic Era.

Bubbling up a discussion in the Slack channel, I'm sharing this analysis on emerging IAM challenges from Agentic AI<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PhWC4KRO00kOPUW113ldG06Vii5dZjW3ljiV1tA0GCc/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.secnaj745bir> systems that now function as autonomous workforce members, and how we can approach addressing them.

I'd love to hear working groups' thoughts on this, and collaborate to extend this work to commonly identify the IAM problems we need to be solving for agentic AI systems and how.

I'm happy to discuss these findings at an upcoming meeting. Till then, let's collaborate on the mailing list and in the doc<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PhWC4KRO00kOPUW113ldG06Vii5dZjW3ljiV1tA0GCc/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.secnaj745bir> itself.

Cheers!

- Ayesha

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