Use cases
Put agents to work without handing them the keys.
AI agent security
AI agents are now the fastest growing kind of identity in the enterprise, and in most environments they already outnumber the people many times over. They read records, move data, call internal APIs and trigger workflows. Yet most of them still sign in the way software did twenty years ago: with a static key or a shared secret copied into a repo, a config file or an environment variable.
A key like that is a bearer credential. It grants whatever it can reach to anyone who holds it, and it cannot tell you who is actually using it. A copied key looks identical to a legitimate one, which is exactly why stolen integration tokens have let attackers move through enterprise systems without tripping a single sign-in alert.
- 10×+Non-human identities now routinely outnumber human ones, and every new agent widens the gap.
- MinutesOATHERA token lifetime, versus static keys that never expire on their own.
- 0Bearer paths. A token lifted from a log authorizes nothing without the bound key and machine.
The common failure modes look the same across every environment:
- Inherited over-reach. An agent quietly runs with the full privileges of whoever created it, far beyond what its task needs.
- Orphaned and shadow agents. Agents outlive the projects that spawned them, and others are spun up with no security review, so no single place shows them all.
- Confused-deputy escalation. A low-privilege request reaches sensitive data by riding on an agent that holds higher privileges.
- Compounding scope. Scopes, service accounts and integrations stack up until, together, they open an exfiltration path no single identity could reach on its own.
OATHERA's answer is to make identity, not the network key, the perimeter. Every agent gets a cryptographically verifiable identity that a human approved, that expires in minutes, and that only works on the machine it was issued for. Each request carries a fresh signature over that one exact action, and a gateway checks it before anything happens. Nothing verifies, nothing runs.
How a request is checked
Approval happens once, by a named person. After that, every single action an agent takes is proven and authorized on its own, in the moment, against the boundary the owner approved.
Coding agents in engineering
The problem. Coding agents run with a developer's full credentials and shell access.
With OATHERA. Each agent runs in an OpenShell sandbox scoped to its repo and approved hosts, under its own identity, owned by the developer who launched it.
Agents on regulated data
The problem. Finance and healthcare teams cannot prove which agent touched which record.
With OATHERA. Every read and write is signed, attributed to an agent and owner, checked by OPA against data class rules, and kept as evidence.
Multi agent workflows
The problem. Agents call other agents and permissions blur across hops.
With OATHERA. Every hop carries its own verified identity and boundary, so a downstream agent never inherits more than it was granted.
Customer facing agents
The problem. Support and sales agents can reach systems far beyond their task.
With OATHERA. Boundaries limit each agent to the tenant, records and operations its task needs, enforced per request.
Third party and vendor agents
The problem. External agents enter your environment with opaque credentials.
With OATHERA. Vendor agents enrol against a named organizational owner, get short lived scoped tokens, and can be revoked instantly.
Audit and compliance
The problem. Auditors ask who approved an agent and what it was allowed to do.
With OATHERA. Audit certificates, decision logs and the agent inventory answer both questions from one place.
Questions, answered
How do AI agents authenticate today, and why is that a problem?
Most agents use a static API key or a shared secret that never changes. Because the same credential is reused everywhere, it cannot prove who is actually making a request — a copied key behaves exactly like the original. OATHERA replaces that with a per-agent identity: a key that stays in your environment, a token that expires in minutes, and a fresh signature over every request.
Are AI agents really a kind of identity?
Yes. An agent calls your systems, acts on someone's behalf and has a reach that has to be governed, exactly like a human user — only faster and without working hours. OATHERA treats each agent as a first-class principal with its own verifiable identity, a named owner, and an operational boundary, rather than an anonymous holder of a shared key.
What are the biggest risks with autonomous agents?
Four recur in practice: agents that inherit far more privilege than their task needs; orphaned or unreviewed agents that no one is tracking; confused-deputy escalation, where a low-privilege request reaches sensitive data through a higher-privilege agent; and copied credentials that keep working because nothing is bound to a specific key or machine.
How does OATHERA keep access least-privilege over time?
Scope is set once, when the owner approves the agent, and then enforced on every request against the exact tenant, task, capability, operation and resource. Tokens live for minutes, so access that is not renewed simply lapses — there is no standing, long-lived grant to drift out of date. Anything outside the boundary is refused and recorded.
What happens if a token is stolen?
Nothing useful. OATHERA credentials are sender-constrained: a token only works together with the private key it is bound to and the machine it was issued on. A token read out of a log or copied from a file authorizes nothing on its own, so there is no bearer path for an attacker to replay.
Will this slow down how fast we can ship AI?
No — the point is the opposite. When security can see who created each agent, what it may do and how it is behaving, approvals become lightweight instead of blocking. Teams adopt agents faster because the identity layer is trusted, and because OATHERA fits alongside the OIDC and workload-identity systems you already run rather than replacing them.
Tell us about your agents. We will map the first boundary with you. Get in touch.
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