I just attended the Secure Minds Summit in Las Vegas, where security and application development experts shared lessons learned from applying AI in their fields. Being adjacent to Black Hat 2025, it's not surprising that a common theme was the security risks of AI agents and MCP (Model Context Protocol). There's an anxious excitement in the community about AI's potential to revolutionize how organizations operate through faster, smarter decision-making, while grappling with the challenge of doing it securely.
Why Permissions Matter in the Age of AI
As organizations explore AI agent deployment, one thing is clear: neither employees nor AI agents should have access to all data. You wouldn't want a marketing AI agent accessing raw payroll data, just as you wouldn't want an HR agent viewing confidential product roadmaps. Without proper access controls, AI agents can create chaos just as easily as they deliver value, since they don't inherently understand which data they should or shouldn't access.
This is where robust permissions systems become critical. Proper access controls ensure AI agents operate within organizational policy boundaries, accessing only data they're explicitly authorized to use.
Watch: How to Implement Access Controls for AI Agents
Sohan, our Lead Developer Advocate at AuthZed, recently explored this topic on the AuthZed YouTube channel with a live demo of implementing AI-aware permissions systems.
Watch the demo here:
Authorization Infrastructure for AI: Built for Scale and Safety
In June, we launched AuthZed's Authorization Infrastructure for AI, purpose-built to ensure AI systems respect permissions, prevent data leaks, and maintain comprehensive audit trails.
AuthZed's infrastructure is powered by SpiceDB, our open-source project based on Google's Zanzibar. SpiceDB's scale and speed make it an ideal authorization solution for supporting AI's demanding performance requirements.
Our infrastructure delivers:
- Billions of access control lists (ACLs)
- Millions of authorization checks per second
- Global replication across data centers
Want to learn more about the future of AuthZed and authorization infrastructure for AI? Join us on August 20th for "AuthZed is 5: The Authorization Infrastructure Event." Register here.
