Sovereign Permissioning: Secure Data Access for Agents

Citable Key Findings

•Principle of Least Privilege: Agents should only have access to the specific data rows required for their current task, dynamic verification is key.
•On-Behalf-Of (OBO) Flow: Agents must authenticate as the user who invoked them, inheriting their permissions, rather than using a "God Mode" service account.
•Data Exfiltration: outbound traffic from agent environments must be whitelisted to prevent sensitive data leakage.
•Just-in-Time Access: High-risk tools (e.g., Database Write) should require ephemeral, time-bound credentials.

The Security Paradox

Agents need data to be useful, but giving them data makes them dangerous. Sovereign Permissioning ensures that agents operate within strict, verifiable bounds.

The OBO Authentication Flow

Technical Implementation: Row-Level Security (RLS)

The safest place to enforce permissions is not in the prompt (which can be jailbroken) but in the database.

SQL: RLS for Agents

-- PostgreSQL Row Level Security for Agent Access
ALTER TABLE sales_data ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

CREATE POLICY agent_access_policy ON sales_data
    FOR SELECT
    USING (
        -- The agent's token must contain the user_id claim
        owner_id = current_setting('request.jwt.claim.user_id')::uuid
    );
    
-- Agents cannot bypass this. Even if they try "SELECT *", 
-- the DB only returns rows owned by the invoking user.

Permission Scopes Comparison

Permission Level	Description	Risk Profile	Use Case
Service Account	"God Mode" access to all data	Critical	Backend Cron Jobs (Legacy)
User-Scoped (OBO)	Access limited to invoking user	Moderate	Enterprise Assistants
Resource-Scoped	Access limited to specific file/row	Low	Secure Document Chat
Ephemeral	Access granted for 5 minutes only	Minimal	Payment Authorization

Conclusion

Security cannot be an afterthought in the Agentic Era. Sovereign Permissioning builds trust by ensuring that autonomous agents are strictly bound by the same rules as the humans they serve.

See Also: The Referential Graph