Secure Model Context Protocol with Cerbos authorization
Control what AI agents and tools can access with policy-driven authorization powered by Cerbos.
Tool authorization
Control which MCP tools each user or role can invoke with fine-grained Cerbos policies
Dynamic permissions
Enforce context-aware access control that adapts based on user identity, role, and request attributes
Zero trust for AI agents
Apply least-privilege access to every tool call and resource request in your MCP server
How Cerbos works with Model Context Protocol
AI agents and tools introduce a new class of authorization challenges. They act on behalf of users, access sensitive data, and chain operations, all of which need fine-grained access control.
Cerbos provides policy-driven authorization that controls what AI systems can do, which data they can access, and on whose behalf. Policies are written in human-readable YAML and evaluated at request time.
With Cerbos and Model Context Protocol, you get guardrails that scale with your AI adoption, centrally managed policies, full audit trails, and sub-millisecond decision times that don't slow down agent workflows.
How Cerbos secures Model Context Protocol agents
- Define policies for AI agent actions and data access, Write YAML policies that specify which tools, data, and operations each agent or user can access.
- Agent requests authorization from Cerbos, Before performing an action, the AI agent sends the user context, tool, and target resource to the PDP.
- Cerbos evaluates context, tool, and resource, The PDP applies fine-grained policies considering the user's identity, the requested tool, and the target data.
- Agent proceeds or is denied, Cerbos returns an allow or deny decision and the agent framework enforces it, with a full audit trail.
Security risks of unsecured AI agents
Without authorization at every tool call, AI agents introduce risks that traditional application security doesn't cover:
- Privilege escalation through tools. An agent with unrestricted tool access can perform actions the delegating user isn't authorized for — reading sensitive data, modifying resources, or invoking admin operations.
- Incomplete identity context. Agents often carry only a partial user reference. Without the full profile, policies can't enforce department-level, role-based, or attribute-based restrictions accurately.
- No audit trail. Without authorization checks at each step, there's no record of what the agent did, on whose behalf, or why it was allowed — making incident investigation and compliance reporting impossible.
- Transitive trust. When agents chain tool calls or delegate to other agents, permissions can expand silently if each step isn't individually authorized.
Richer agent decisions with Cerbos Synapse
When an AI agent makes an authorization call, it often includes only an agent ID or a partial reference to the delegating user. Cerbos Synapse enriches agent requests with the full user profile from your identity provider, resource metadata from your data stores, and the agent's own constraints — so the PDP receives complete context for every decision without the agent needing to assemble it.
FAQ
How does Cerbos secure Model Context Protocol agents?
Cerbos evaluates fine-grained policies at every tool call and data access, ensuring AI agents only perform actions and access data they are authorized for, on behalf of the requesting user.
Can I audit what my AI agents are doing?
Yes. Every authorization decision is logged with full context, the principal, resource, action, and result. This gives you a complete audit trail of AI agent behavior.
Learn more about Cerbos
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Cerbos + Model Context Protocol
- Cerbos policies govern AI agent tool access and data visibility
- Full audit trail for every AI tool call and data access
- Per-user permissions enforced across autonomous agent workflows
- Sub-millisecond policy evaluation with no agent pipeline overhead
Authorization for AI systems
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What is Cerbos?
Cerbos is an end-to-end enterprise authorization software for Zero Trust environments and AI-powered systems. It enforces fine-grained, contextual, and continuous authorization across apps, APIs, AI agents, MCP servers, services, and workloads.
Cerbos consists of an open-source Policy Decision Point, Enforcement Point integrations, and a centrally managed Policy Administration Plane (Cerbos Hub) that coordinates unified policy-based authorization across your architecture. Enforce least privilege & maintain full visibility into access decisions with Cerbos authorization.