PBAC is back. Why policy‑based access control is trending again for enterprise security

Broken access control has long been the #1 web application security risk, topping the OWASP Top 10 list in recent years. Time and again, development teams have grappled with authorization bugs that expose data or functions to the wrong users. That’s why it was so encouraging to see leading analyst firm KuppingerCole highlight Policy‑Based Access Control (PBAC) as a top trend in identity and security for 2025.

KuppingerCole described PBAC as “the comeback of a 50-year-old concept,” noting that while early policy systems, like 2000s-era XACML, were too complex, modern approaches have made dynamic, context-aware authorization practical at scale.

It feels like the industry is finally shining a spotlight on the solution with the same intensity it has long given the problem.

Why traditional authorization fails modern applications

The prevalence of broken access control isn’t surprising when you consider how most authorization logic gets built in practice. Historically, developers have been forced to scatter if statements and role-checks throughout application code. A simple app might start with a few roles (“admin”, “user”), but as business needs evolve, so does the tangle of conditionals.

Soon you end up with a maze of role-based exceptions and special cases that no single person fully understands. Every new feature or rule change risks breaking something else. This ad hoc approach is a breeding ground for vulnerabilities.

In fact, OWASP’s data shows 94% of applications tested in 2021 had some form of broken access control, which is why it moved to the top of the OWASP Top 10. Hardcoded rules sprinkled across services are brittle; it’s almost inevitable that a check gets missed or misconfigured, leaving a hole for attackers.

We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly. In one notorious case, a fast growing company started with a coarse role system and ended up with employees having “God mode” access to everything, even viewing sensitive customer data, because fine-grained rules were never put in place. It’s easy to see how authorization debt accumulates: small shortcuts in early development become major liabilities at scale.

What is policy‑based access control (PBAC)?

This is precisely the issue that PBAC is designed to solve. Policy-based access control means pulling those hardcoded permissions out of your application and into a centralized policy decision engine. Instead of writing endless conditional logic in code, you define human-readable policies that declare who can access what under which conditions. At runtime, your application simply asks the PBAC service, “Is this action allowed for this user on this resource?” The decision comes from evaluating the policies, not from scattered logic. In effect, PBAC externalizes authorization logic, treating access rules as data rather than static code.

Importantly, PBAC policies can incorporate far more context than basic role checks. While role-based access control (RBAC) ties decisions only to a user’s role, PBAC policies evaluate attributes and context: Who is the user (role, department, clearance)? What resource are they accessing (record owner, resource sensitivity)? What action are they trying to perform? And under what context (time, location, device, risk level)?

By weighing these factors, PBAC enables fine-grained, just-in-time decisions instead of one-size-fits-all roles. In many ways, PBAC is a superset of attribute-based access control (ABAC) - it uses attributes about users, resources, actions, and environment to allow or deny requests.

But critically, PBAC also emphasizes policy-as-code practices: policies are managed in version control, tested, and even reviewed like any other code artifact This means access rules can evolve quickly and safely without a redeploy of your application.

Why PBAC is making a comeback

If PBAC isn’t a brand new idea, why is it trending now? The concept has been around for decades (IBM’s RACF in 1976 was essentially policy-based), but widespread adoption lagged. Early implementations, like XACML XML policies in the 2000s, proved too unwieldy and verbose for developers. Many teams fell back to the simplicity of roles and code checks, despite the limitations. However, today a perfect storm is driving PBAC’s resurgence.

Complexity of modern systems. Applications now have microservices, multi-tenant architectures, and a mix of human and machine identities. Simple role models collapse under this complexity. PBAC brings much needed context and nuance to authorization decisions (e.g. allowing access based on a user’s project and their relationship to the data, not just a generic role).

Dynamic security requirements. In a zero-trust, post-perimeter world, access decisions must adapt in real time to changing context and risk. Policy engines can evaluate risk scores, IP reputation, time of day, etc., on the fly - far beyond what a static role can capture. KuppingerCole notes that PBAC enables “precise, real time decisions” for smarter access control.

Better tooling and standards. New open source policy engines and policy languages have made writing and maintaining policies far more approachable. These tools emphasize declarative policy, testing, and integration with CI/CD, addressing the usability issues of earlier PBAC attempts. In addition, emerging standards (for example, the PDP/PEP/PIP model and initiatives like OpenID’s AuthZENZ working group) are helping to formalize how externalized authorization components interact.

Recognition of authorization as a first class concern. The industry is waking up to the fact that authorization deserves the same investment as authentication. Broken access control wouldn’t be rampant if we treated authorization with the engineering rigor we do for authN. With high-profile breaches and stricter regulations, organizations are seeking solutions and PBAC provides a clear path to systematically enforce least privilege across the stack.

In short, PBAC is back because modern software demands it. The conditions that sidelined policy-based access in the past (complex tools and slower compute) have given way to developer friendly policy engines and high performance decision checks. Now the benefits are too significant to ignore.

Benefits of PBAC for enterprises

Adopting PBAC pays off in several ways for engineering teams and the business.

By centralizing authorization logic in one service, you remove the primary cause of access bugs, no more scattered logic or forgotten checks. Policies are applied consistently across all services, which dramatically reduces the chance of an exploitable gap. When a new rule is needed, you update one policy file, not hunt through dozens of code repositories.

PBAC makes it straightforward to enforce fine-grained permissions and incorporate dynamic context. You can easily express rules like “Managers can view records in their department if the record is marked as not confidential” or “Allow download only if MFA was passed in this session”. This ensures sensitive resources stay within proper bounds and implements true least privilege. It’s no surprise that companies with strong compliance requirements (finance, healthcare, etc.) are embracing PBAC. It gives them the knobs to enforce complex policies, such as GDPR or SOC2 controls, uniformly across the organization.

When an auditor or security team asks “Who has access to this data, and why?”, PBAC provides an immediate answer. Instead of digging through application code, you can simply point to a version controlled policy that’s human readable and to precise audit logs. This clarity is huge for compliance. Policies double as documentation of your access model. Updates to meet new regulations, say, a data residency rule, can be made in one place and take effect everywhere, in real time.

Decoupling policy from code means fewer costly code changes for access updates. Security and product teams can adjust authorization rules without a full deploy cycle, freeing developers to focus on features. Over time, this centralized control yields significant cost savings. Organizations avoid rewriting the same permission logic in multiple services and reduce the risk and time spent on security incidents. Many of our customers describe this decoupling as a revelation: it brings a DevOps-like speed to permission changes. When a manager needs a new privilege or an emergency access tweak is required, it’s a policy change not a hotfix to app code.

Finally, in a large and distributed system, keeping authorization consistent is hard. PBAC shines here by providing a single source of truth for decisions. As you add microservices or new applications, each one can hook into the same policy decision point (PDP) rather than reinventing authorization logic. This consistency not only improves security, it also means a better user experience. No more “why can I do X in one app but not the other?”. Modern PBAC engines are built to be stateless and horizontally scalable, capable of handling high decision throughput with minimal latency impact. In practice, that means you can enforce permissions on every API call without slowing things down.

Implementing PBAC

Making the move to PBAC might feel daunting, but today it’s more straightforward than ever. Here’s how teams typically get started:

1. Pick a policy engine

You’ll need a component to evaluate policies at runtime, essentially the brain of PBAC. For example, Cerbos provides a stateless policy decision point you can run alongside your services. The key is that this engine can parse your policies and answer yes/no permission questions via an API. At Cerbos, we’ve focused on making the PDP integration as lightweight as a function call or HTTP request in your app. It’s also technology agnostic, so you can use it from any language or microservice.

2. Define your policies (Policy-as-code)

Start by modeling your access rules in declarative policies. This involves identifying your key subjects (users, services), resources (data or functions), and what actions can be taken. Then think about the attributes and conditions that should govern access. For example: “Allow a user with role=manager to Approve an Expense if the expense.department equals user.department and expense.amount < $1000.” Write these rules in your policy language of choice. Store policies in a Git repo just like code - that way you can review changes, run tests, and maintain version history. Many teams begin by translating their existing role matrix into base policies, then iteratively add attribute conditions for finer control.

3. Externalize and integrate

With a PDP running and initial policies written, integrate the authorization check into your application flow. This usually means replacing in-code checks. e.g. the scattered if user.role == "admin" with a call to the PBAC service. For example, if using Cerbos, your service would ask: “Should Alice be allowed to UPDATE invoice #123?” and Cerbos evaluates the policies with Alice’s attributes and the invoice’s data to respond allow or deny. It’s important to handle this call robustly: use caching or batch queries if needed, and decide on fail-safe behavior (most choose “fail closed” – deny if the auth service is unreachable, to avoid granting access by accident). Luckily, client libraries and sidecars exist to make this integration easier for popular tech stacks.

4. Iterate and refine

Treat authorization as an ongoing part of development. As new features roll out, update or add policies accordingly. Because PBAC allows continuous, modular policy updates, you can adapt quickly. Also take advantage of testing: write unit tests for your policies (e.g. user X should be able to do Y, user Z should not). This gives confidence that changes don’t introduce regressions. Over time, you’ll likely enhance your PBAC setup. Perhaps integrating relationship based access for certain features (e.g. sharing scenarios) or leveraging contextual risk scores for adaptive policies. PBAC isn’t a one-and-done static thing; it evolves with your application’s requirements.

5. Leverage tooling

Finally, use the ecosystem around policy engines. For example, with Cerbos you can use the Cerbos Playground to prototype and simulate policy decisions in your browser, or query planning to optimize database filtering. Such tools can speed up development and ensure your PBAC implementation is efficient. And remember, you don’t have to rip out all legacy authorization layer overnight. Many teams adopt PBAC gradually, starting with the most critical services or new greenfield projects, then expanding it as confidence grows.

Conclusion

It’s validating to see the broader industry acknowledge what we at Cerbos have believed for a long time: Policy-based access control is the future of authorization. When an analyst of Martin Kuppinger’s stature calls PBAC a “top trend” and a key to smarter access management, it underscores a shift toward building more secure, maintainable software. The most critical security problem in web apps (broken access control) finally has a spotlight on its solution - and it’s a solution within reach of every team.

At Cerbos, we couldn’t agree more with this direction. In fact, we’ve been ahead of the curve: our authorization solution was built from the ground up to enable PBAC for modern applications and AI agents. We’ve seen startups and enterprises alike adopt a policy driven approach and immediately eliminate whole classes of bugs while accelerating their development cycle. It’s not just about following a trend; it’s about empowering teams to get authorization right by design.

If broken access control has been keeping you up at night, or showing up in your pentest reports, now is the time to consider PBAC. The concepts are battle tested, the tools are ready, and the path forward is clear. The industry is rallying around policy-based authorization and with the right tooling, you can start reaping the benefits today. Here at Cerbos, we’re excited to help teams take that step. PBAC is back, and this time, it’s here to stay.

Ready to see how PBAC fits into your stack? Book a free 1:1 session with a Cerbos engineer to walk through your requirements, or start exploring Cerbos Hub on your own.