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An AI agent’s initial authorization does not automatically cover every action it may take later. If its task, tools, data or context changes, the system should check whether the proposed action is still within scope—and require human approval when the action could have significant consequences. The agent’s instructions are not the permission boundary: the systems it acts through must enforce authorization.
For example, a person might authorize an agent to read project files. If the task later expands to sending a message or using a newly connected tool, the system should verify that the original grant covers that operation and its target. This is an illustrative scenario, not a report of a specific incident.
Why can an agent’s authority become insufficient?
An AI agent can accept instructions, gather context from connected resources, process what it finds, and act through tools or other systems. Because those connections can affect data and external services, authorization needs to account for more than the agent’s initial instruction or login.
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What should an authorization check establish?
Identify both the agent and the principal
Represent the agent as a distinct software actor, while preserving its relationship to the person or organization whose authority it uses. NIST identifies identity, authentication and authorization as foundations for making agents known, trusted and governed. Its concept paper asks how a user’s identity can be linked to an agent for delegation and accountability.
Limit the grant to the task
Allow only the tools, operations, data and duration the task requires. OWASP’s LLM06:2025 guidance illustrates the difference between a read-only database task and unnecessary insert, update or delete access. Similarly, an agent asked to summarize a mailbox does not need permission to send or delete messages. Limit both the tools made available to the agent and the permissions those tools carry in downstream systems.
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Check permission when an action is requested
Before each consequential operation, evaluate the current identity, requested operation, target resource, applicable policy and any relevant delegation or context change. This is a practical implementation of NIST’s questions about dynamic authorization and OWASP’s recommendation to check requests against policy; it is not a universal runtime design prescribed by either source.
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Preserve delegation across systems
When an agent acts on someone’s behalf, downstream services should be able to tell whose authority is being used and what scope was delegated. NIST identifies delegated authority, the link between human and agent identities, and accountability as design concerns. Its summary of public comments also reports that commenters called for authorization context to survive service boundaries and delegation chains. Those comments are stakeholder input, not adopted NIST requirements.
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Require approval for high-impact actions
For consequential operations—such as deleting data, sending messages or changing settings—require a person to approve the action when appropriate. OWASP recommends user approval for high-impact actions and authorization enforcement in downstream systems. Approval should be tied to the operation that will actually occur, rather than treated as blanket permission for unrelated future actions.
Record the decision as well as the outcome
Keep records that allow an operator to reconstruct which identity acted, which policy applied, what resource and scope were involved, whether approval was required or obtained, and what operation executed. NIST’s concept paper asks how action and intent might be logged in a tamper-proof, verifiable way and tied back to human authorization. Its comment summary reports stakeholder calls for richer provenance, policy context, agent lineage and human-principal binding; these are not finalized NIST specifications.
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Which authorization approach is safer?
| Control choice | Weaker approach | Safer direction |
|---|---|---|
| Access scope | Agent-wide standing access | Task-scoped access to only the needed tools, operations and data |
| Identity context | Generic service identity with no user context | Preserve the user’s authorization context for downstream checks |
| Permission enforcement | Instructions that tell the model what it may do | Policy enforcement in the system receiving the action |
| Consequential operations | Unreviewed autonomous execution | Human approval for high-impact actions |
| Security evaluation | Testing one attempt or one task type | Testing repeated attempts and distinguishing task types and impacts |
The safer directions reflect OWASP’s published mitigations and issues NIST raises for agent identity and authorization. They are practical design choices, not a claim that one architecture fits every system.
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An agent can read untrusted content, including email, files or webpages, that contains malicious instructions. NIST describes this kind of agent hijacking as a risk because the agent may then use its connected tools to act. A prompt that says “do not send messages” does not replace a permission check in the system that sends them.
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OWASP’s LLM06:2025 guidance puts the boundary in downstream systems: “Implement authorization in downstream systems rather than relying on an LLM to decide if an action is allowed or not.” It also recommends minimizing extension permissions, checking requests against policy, logging and monitoring, and requiring approval for high-impact operations.
NIST CAISI’s January 2025 AgentDojo Workspace evaluation illustrates why test conditions matter. In the simulated tasks described in its technical blog, the strongest baseline attack succeeded 11% of the time, while the strongest new attack developed through red teaming succeeded 81% on a held-out set of user tasks. The evaluation used an upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet configuration; these are test results, not observed rates for deployed agents generally.
Across five selected injection tasks in that evaluation, average measured attack success rose from 57% after one attempt to 80% after 25 attempts. That finding shows how repeated opportunities affected those tests; it does not establish a universal real-world risk rate. The NIST team also added scenarios involving remote code execution, database exfiltration and automated phishing, and reported frequently inducing the agent to follow malicious instructions in those areas. NIST’s stated evaluation lesson was: “When evaluating the robustness of AI systems in adversarial contexts such as agent hijacking, it is crucial to evaluate attacks that were optimized for these systems.”
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What should a team implement first?
- Inventory the agent’s identity and delegated authority. Establish which person or organization it represents, how the agent authenticates, and how downstream services can recognize both identities.
- Reduce permissions to the task’s needs. Remove unnecessary tools and restrict operations and data access; do not give an agent write or delete capability simply because it can read the same resource.
- Enforce policy where actions execute. Check the identity, operation, target and current policy in the connected system, rather than relying on the model to obey a prompt.
- Define approval points. Identify high-impact operations and require approval for the specific action before it runs.
- Retain an auditable decision trail. Log the principal, agent, scope, resource, policy decision, approval and executed action so an operator can reconstruct why the operation was allowed.
- Test changes and repeated attempts. Evaluate how the system behaves when tools or context change, when untrusted content contains instructions, and when attacks are repeated—not just in a single-shot test.
What NIST and OWASP do—and do not—settle
NIST NCCoE’s February 2026 concept paper outlines a proposed project applying identity standards and best practices to agent authorization. Its comment period closed April 2, 2026. The paper raises open questions about identity, delegation, dynamic policy, auditability and prompt injection; it does not prescribe a universal legal rule or a single required runtime design.
OWASP LLM06:2025 is guidance for reducing excessive agency through controls such as least privilege, downstream authorization, approval for high-impact actions, logging and monitoring. It is useful implementation guidance, but not a complete identity architecture. Together, the sources support treating authorization as an ongoing check tied to identity, scope and current context—not as a one-time grant inferred from the agent’s original task.
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