Intent-Based Access Control (IBAC)

Role- and attribute-based access control decide based on who is asking. Agents complicate this, because a legitimate identity can be manipulated into making illegitimate requests. IBAC adds the question of why the action is being taken.

IBAC evaluates signals such as:

• Declared intent: The task or mission the agent was assigned.
• Action fit: Whether the requested tool and arguments serve that task.
• Data relevance: Whether the data being accessed relates to the stated purpose.
• Sequence context: How the request relates to prior steps in the workflow.
• User authority: Whether the originating user could authorize this action themselves.

IBAC is especially effective against confused deputy and goal hijack attacks, where every individual call passes traditional permission checks but the overall behavior serves an attacker.

Implementing IBAC requires capturing intent at the start of a task and carrying it through every tool call, so runtime policy can compare what was asked with what is being done.

How PointGuard AI Helps

PointGuard AI Agent Mission Control binds each agent to a mission and validates actions against it in real time, an intent-based approach that blocks permitted-but-wrong actions. Agent Identity & Access Security supplies the identity and delegation context needed to make those decisions trustworthy.

Learn More

• OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications
• OWASP LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency
• MITRE ATLAS