Microsoft Foundry Agent Governance: How OBO, RBAC, and Approval Boundaries Work
Microsoft's Foundry platform requires a structured permission model to govern AI agents acting on behalf of users or autonomously in the background. The framework distinguishes three runtime identity types: On-Behalf-Of (OBO) for user-context tasks like reading emails, Agent Identity for background jobs writing to Azure Storage, and dedicated write identities for high-impact actions such as sending emails or updating CRM records. A shared service principal can technically handle all three flows but risks blurring permission boundaries, making separate identity assignments the recommended approach. Developers are advised to define a permission ledger before configuring tools, recording six fields per action: principal, resource, action, scope, approval, and audit trail. The article also warns that mismatched authentication support in tools can cause agents to work in development but return 403 errors after publication, highlighting the need to verify tool documentation early.
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