Covers the 'Agentic Identity Broker,' an open-source solution designed to secure AI agents when accessing third-party services with user permissions.
Imagine this: On a busy morning, you tell your smartphone, “Check my schedule today and send an email to reschedule my meeting.” The AI agent handles it effortlessly. It’s a convenient world. But behind this convenience, a nagging anxiety sometimes creeps in. You might worry, “Am I handing over my email password or critical access tokens to this AI?”
As AI integrates deeply into our daily lives, ‘Agentic Identity’ is emerging as a critical topic in digital security. Source: Twilio The ‘Agentic Identity Broker,’ recently released by Zalando, is a technology that has emerged to resolve this user anxiety and create a secure digital environment.
Why It Matters
Until now, we primarily had ‘humans’ logging into services. But we are living in an era where ‘AI agents’ roam various services (calendars, email, work tools, etc.) on our behalf to perform tasks. Source: Tianpan.co
The problem is that ‘OAuth2,’ the standard we use for internet security, is not perfect in an AI agent environment. According to a report by Palo Alto Networks (Palo Alto Unit 42), there can be security blind spots when agents use OAuth2. Source: DEV Community If these blind spots are left unaddressed, malicious hackers could cunningly manipulate AI agents to secretly hijack user account permissions.
The Explainer
To easily understand the ‘Agentic Identity Broker,’ let’s compare it to an ‘Access Pass Manager.’
In the past, users handed their master keys (access tokens) directly to the AI. If the AI turned malicious or security was breached, everything was at risk. However, the situation changes when the Agentic Identity Broker is introduced.
- Introducing an Intermediary: Users do not give keys directly to the AI. Instead, they request them from the ‘Identity Broker.’ “Create a temporary access pass for this AI that only allows it to view my calendar.” Source: Agentic Identity Broker
- Delegating Only Necessary Permissions: The manager verifies exactly what work the AI will perform and issues a ‘digital access pass’ limited to the scope required for that specific task to the AI. Source: Zalando Engineering
- Protecting Tokens: Thanks to this, the user’s real master keys (provider tokens) are never passed to the AI even once. Source: Daily.dev
In short, this technology is a ‘secure agent’ designed to temporarily broker permissions only when the AI performs tasks and allow the user to revoke these permissions at any time when not needed. Source: Agentic Identity Broker
Where We Stand
Currently, the field of AI agent security still has many challenges to solve. Source: ThinkIdentity This technology, which Zalando released under the MIT license, Source: Daily.dev combines with infrastructure gateways (such as Agentgateway) to help centrally and intelligently manage permission systems when AI agents communicate with other services. Source: GitHub - zalando-incubator However, this is not a technology that completely replaces existing Identity Providers; rather, it acts as a supplementary tool that further strengthens the security of the permission delegation process. Source: Zalando Engineering
What’s Next
AI agents will become even smarter and operate across more apps and services. Technology that can verify and control in real-time whether they are ‘using only the permissions I approved’ is essential. Source: Akeyless Through this open-source release, developers will be able to build agent-based services in a more secure way, and users like us can also look forward to feeling more at ease entrusting personal data to AI.
MindTickleBytes’ AI Reporter Perspective Security technology is always a step behind in the speed race. However, the active open-source release of identity brokering technology is an important signal that the AI ecosystem has now entered a stage of ‘trust’ beyond just ‘speed.’ We must remember again that the first virtue an AI should have to become our reliable assistant is ‘safety’ rather than ‘intelligence.’
References
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[OAuth2 delegation and consent for AI agents Agentic Identity Broker](https://agenticidentitybroker.dev/) - GitHub - zalando-incubator/agentic-identity-broker: Identity broker for …
- agentic-identity-broker/README.md at main - GitHub
- Agentic Identity Protocols — OAuth 2.1, MCP, A2A, CIBA, OIDC-A, and the …
- Agentic Platform: Open-Sourcing the Agentic Identity Broker
- Agent Identity and Delegated Authorization: OAuth Patterns for Agentic …
- AgenticPlatform: Open-Sourcing theAgenticIdentityBroker
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[What isagenticidentity? SecuringAIagentsin 2026 Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/insights/agentic-identity) -
[AIAgentIdentitySecurity: The 2026 Deployment Guide Akeyless](https://www.akeyless.io/blog/ai-agent-identity-security-2026-deployment-guide/) - Palo Alto Unit 42 Just Said It:AgenticIdentityIs… - DEV Community
- Storing all AI personal data on a server
- Safely brokering permissions to access third-party services on behalf of the user
- Drafting emails on behalf of the AI agent
- Yes, it replaces them
- No, it does not replace them
- It replaces them conditionally
- Security level is too high
- It is too complex to use
- There are security blind spots when using agents
- Zalando
- OpenAI