--- title: "Cerbos Synapse" description: "The Cerbos enrichment and orchestration layer: assembles identity, resource and relationship context from external systems, and connects enforcement points through the protocols they already speak." canonical: "https://www.cerbos.dev/product-cerbos-synapse" source: "https://www.cerbos.dev/product-cerbos-synapse" --- # Cerbos Synapse Assemble identity, resource, and relationship context from your IdPs, databases, and APIs, and connect enforcement points through the protocols they already use for consistent authorization decisions *Unified authorization context* ## Real-time context from your data fabric - **Centralized authorization context** — Fetch identity, resource, relationship data at decision time for true zero-trust authorization, without custom middleware or PEP code. - **Consistent enforcement across your stack** — Apply the same authorization policies across application APIs, gateways, data platforms, infrastructure, and AI agents. - **Native protocol translation** — Connect gateways, message queues, data platforms and infrastructure systems to Cerbos using their native authorization hooks. - **Govern authorization data centrally** — Control how authorization attributes are fetched, cached, and injected into decisions from one platform layer. - **Support complex access models** — Combine attributes, relationships, and external data sources without complicating policies or slowing down the policy engine. - **Millisecond enrichment at scale** — Built-in caching with per-source TTLs keeps hot-path enrichment fast and protects upstream systems from per-request query load. ## AI agents carry minimal identity context. Cerbos fills the gap. - **Identify the human behind every agent request** — Synapse can fetch the delegating user's profile from your IdP and pass both identities to the policy engine in one call. - **Evaluate agent and human together** — One policy call evaluates what the agent is allowed to do and whether the user behind it is authorized to trigger that action. - **No standing privilege for non-human identities** — Access is never assumed from a previous decision. Every agent request is checked against the current policy at request time. - **Let agents discover what's allowed** — Query planning returns the full set of resources an agent can access on behalf of a user, with the same enrichment applied. - **Full audit trail for every agent decision** — Capture the enriched authorization request and decision outcome for full traceability across agent and human access decisions. *Developer-ready integrations* ## Works with your existing tools, workflows, and infrastructure - **Identity provider enrichment** — Fetch user profiles, groups, and attributes from Okta, Entra ID, Cognito, LDAP, and other identity providers. - **Infrastructure integrations** — Authorize access from API Gateways, messaging queues, data platforms, deployment pipelines, and other systems using the authorization protocols they support. - **Data sources and databases** — Retrieve identity and resource attributes from SQL databases, graph stores, and internal APIs. - **Custom extensions** — Build custom data sources, protocol adapters, and request transformations in any language that compiles to WebAssembly. ## What teams build with Synapse - [AI agent guardrails](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/agentic-authorization) - [MCP server security](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/dynamic-authorization-for-MCP-servers) - [RAG authorization](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/access-control-for-rag) - [AI gateway governance](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/ai-gateway-authorization) - [Application permissions](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/application-permissions) - [Multi-tenant SaaS access control](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/per-tenant-custom-policies) - [Programmatic permission management](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/dynamic-policies) - [Legacy application authorization](https://www.cerbos.dev/features-benefits-and-use-cases/legacy-app-authorization) ## What customers say > When I did an audit, I found that the cost of managing authorization and authentication in-house over the entire lifespan of the company was in the 7 figures. Cerbos saved that. Deploying Cerbos has allowed our engineers to spend their time on what really matters for our success. > > — Chuck Hardy, Head of Engineering @Salesroom > Having to modify authorization is a five-minute job now. Having to troubleshoot authorization is a five-minute job. So that has actually allowed the team to spend more time where it really matters on the platform. > > — Karen Kim, CEO @Human Managed > We rely on Cerbos to make authorization decisions across the whole mesh - millions of times a day. And it’s fast. We don’t even think about it anymore. It just works. > > — Rob Crowe, Principal Engineer @Utility Warehouse > We went from one user - every role, to a world where there are many users - many roles. And the product, it relies on Cerbos to actually bring the value that we want to bring to customers. All of our customers are relying on Cerbos, by relying on the product, which is of course relying on Cerbos. > > — Joe Lines, CEO & Co-Founder @Nook > One of our big considerations was speed. We have strict latency tolerances. When it comes to Cerbos - you can call it a hundred times during a request and it doesn't matter. It's incredibly fast. > > — Steve High, Staff Engineer @Complex > The main reason we switched to Cerbos was to have a sophisticated authorization software to help organize and handle our authorization. We wanted to focus on domain related features and spend less time backtracking and fixing issues with our authorization. > > — Lead Software Developer at @BarrierSystems > Cerbos enables us to go to market very quickly, compared to an in-house solution. It allows us to offer new products faster, because creating or editing policies is so easy. > > — Engin Attar, Head of Product and Growth, Co-Founder @Debite > We got the foundation set. Now we can scale and include more complex policies. And we can grow in the right direction and with the right security thanks to Cerbos authorization management. > > — Edgar Rivera, CTO @4gcapital > Having the separation of the permissions from the code base just makes the code base more elegant. It makes the permissioning more elegant. It means they're centralized, so they're not tied to specific endpoints. And ultimately it means that different business owners have the ability to actually make updates. > > — Henry Arnold, CTO & Co-Founder @Nook > We're not worried about scaling because we can easily increase our load on Cerbos. It will also be easy for us to change how we're distributing policies as we reach different points of scale. > > — David Workman, Senior Software Engineer @ Salesroom > Offering dynamic roles and permissions makes us more competitive in the market. We’re providing companies with a software that can be adapted to their workflows. > > — Ibrahim Bou Ncoula, CTO @Supy > We can create unlimited conditions, attributes, and parameters at any level of granularity without writing any code. It allows us to deliver truly personalized services quickly, securely, and at scale. > > — Karen Kim, CEO @Human Managed [Talk to an engineer](https://www.cerbos.dev/workshop) · [Try Cerbos](https://hub.cerbos.cloud/)