> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.p0.dev/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.p0.dev/readme/agentic-control-plane.md).

# P0 AuthZ Control Plane for Agents

Organizations have always needed least-privileged controls over what identities can do in sensitive systems. AI agents do not change that requirement, they dramatically intensify it. Agents act autonomously across more systems, around the clock, at machine speed. And they do so using the same broad permissions and static credentials that enterprises already struggle to govern for human users and\
non-human identities.

This creates three core risks to the business:

* **Loose delegation:** The agent inherits delegated authority without a defined scope, ownership or boundaries. The agent gets whatever access the weakest link allows.
* **Standing privilege:** The agent gets broad, standing access that long outlives any given task they are invoked to complete. Leaving that access path wide open to malicious activity.
* **Broken attribution:** When something goes wrong, nobody can explain who asked, what happened or why it was allowed.

#### How agents break traditional access management models

Agents introduce two structural changes that traditional identity access models do not handle:

* **Multiple identities at play.** Every agent action involves at least two identities: the originator and the agent itself, and they should rarely hold the same authority. Treating them as one (agent-as-user or agent-as-service-account) collapses the distinction and grants either end with too much access and obscures human accountability.
* **Complex action chain.** Where user access workflows are fairly straightforward, agents require at least four distinct control points, with multi-agent workflows extending this even further. Policy applied at any single layer leaves gaps across the others.

#### Benefits of the AuthZ Control Plane for Agents

Whether agents are triggered by humans, service accounts, workloads or other agents, every action needs identity and context that carries through the full access chain. With P0, every agentic access workflow is evaluated, scoped and governed at runtime.

* **Discover**. Inventory all agents and MCP servers, managed or\
  unmanaged.
  * Discover all intermediate agents, identities, tools and resources
  * Understand permissions, access paths and delegated authority
  * Identify shadow agents, standing access and emerging risk
* **Control.** Authorize what they can access, when and with whose authority.
  * Enforce runtime authorization before actions occur
  * Apply Zero Standing Privilege and Just-in-time access
  * Control agent behavior through policy, context and approvals
* **Prove.** Show what happened, ensure accountability and monitor for policy drift.
  * Capture the full action chain across requester, agent, tool and resource
  * Explain why access was granted, denied or revoked
  * Deliver audit-ready evidence, accountability and compliance

### How P0 Security controls agentic access at runtime

The P0 AuthZ Control Plane for Agents enforces policy at runtime in two critical ways that most tools do not: by understanding the full identity context behind every action and carrying that through each control point to enforces policy across the entire action chain at runtime.

* **Blended identity context** - Ties the agent to the human, service account, workload or agent that initiated the action for comprehensive context
* **End-to-end policy enforcement** - Applies policy to the blended identity across each control point in action chain before access occurs

P0’s agentic security offering is composed of two distinct but complementary pieces. Understanding where each sits in your stack prevents confusion when evaluating or deploying them.

**Layer 1: P0 OAuth Server and P0 AI Gateway**\
Sits in the data path between your agents and your MCP servers. Intercepts every tool call, verifies identity, enforces policy and writes to the audit log. Self-hosted in your environment so your sensitive data never leaves your perimeter.

**Layer 2: P0 AuthZ Control PlaneTM for Agents**\
The policy engine and authorization layer that tells the gateway what to allow, flag or block at runtime. Defines roles, manages JIT approvals, surfaces governance exceptions and provides the audit and identity inventory. Hosted as SaaS.

P0 Security covers these four control points in every agent action chain:

| Control point                 | Question                             |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **1. User authentication**    | Who is the accountable human?        |
| **2. Agent authentication**   | Which agent is acting?               |
| **3. Tool authorization**     | Can this agent use this tool?        |
| **4. Resource authorization** | What can it do in the target system? |

**Blended identity.** The gateway verifies the human by signing them in through Google Workspace, the identity provider supported for user sign-in today, and issues each agent client its own credentials. Agents can also authenticate with tokens minted by your own IdP, by enrolling that issuer as an [identity provider](/integrations/resource-integrations/agentic-gateway/identity-provider.md) on the gateway. On each session it produces a signed token that cryptographically binds the user and the agent together. That token travels with every MCP tool call, and the agent never receives the credentials to the upstream system.

**Enforcement layers.**

* At layer 1, the gateway enforces at the MCP protocol layer, evaluating conditions on each MCP tool call. This applies to any MCP server, but may be too coarse for complex services.
* At layer 2, when P0 has an IAM integration with the upstream service (AWS and GCP today), enforcement happens *inside* that service via a session-bound temporary user, role, or policy, so the service itself controls and enforces the agent's effective entitlements. This unlocks the full extent of the service's native access control for any agent.

### Related documentation

* [Deploying the P0 AI Gateway](/getting-started/deploying-the-p0-mcp-gateway.md): Architecture and installation of the self-hosted enforcement components
* [Agentic Gateway integration](/integrations/resource-integrations/agentic-gateway.md): Register the gateway and configure the MCP servers it fronts
* [P0 CLI commands](/p0-cli/p0-commands-and-usage.md): Connect agents and manage access from the command line

### Get started with agentic authorization

P0 delivers agentic authorization as a Helm chart you deploy into your own Kubernetes environment. Start with [Deploying the P0 AI Gateway](/getting-started/deploying-the-p0-mcp-gateway.md), then configure your upstream servers with the [Agentic Gateway integration](/integrations/resource-integrations/agentic-gateway.md). To scope a rollout for your organization, [contact P0](https://www.p0.dev/).