Senior Technical Staff Member | IBM Research, Hybrid Cloud SPIFFE Steering Committee Member | Building zero-trust identity infrastructure for cloud-native AI agents
When AI agents act on behalf of users -- committing code, calling APIs, triggering workflows -- who holds the identity?
I'm building Kagenti -- an open-source platform for deploying, securing, and governing AI agents on Kubernetes. The security layer uses SPIFFE/SPIRE, OAuth 2.0 token exchange (RFC 8693), and transparent sidecar injection so agent developers never write auth code.
User (authorization) --> Agent (SPIFFE identity) --> Token Exchange (RFC 8693) --> Target Service
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Zero code changes Subject preserved (audit trail)
The agent holds cryptographic identity. The user holds delegated authorization. The platform enforces policy.
- KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 -- "When an Agent Acts on Your Behalf, Who Holds the Keys?" -- Cryptographic identity and delegation for cloud-native AI agents
| Project | Role | Description |
|---|---|---|
| kagenti/kagenti | Creator & Maintainer | Agentic platform -- installer, UI, orchestration for secure AI agents on Kubernetes |
| kagenti/kagenti-extensions | Creator & Maintainer | Admission webhook, AuthBridge (AuthProxy + client registration), Helm charts |
| kagenti/agent-examples | Creator & Maintainer | Reference agent implementations and demo tools |
| spiffe/tornjak | Co-creator & Maintainer | SPIRE management UI and API layer (CNCF) |
| Kuadrant/mcp-gateway | Contributor | Envoy-based MCP Gateway with Istio and policy attachment integration |
- Workload Identity -- SPIFFE/SPIRE, JWT-SVIDs, attestation, chain-of-trust
- Agent Security -- OAuth 2.0 token exchange, subject preservation, scope-based access control
- Cloud-Native Infrastructure -- Kubernetes admission webhooks, Envoy sidecars, service mesh coexistence
- Agent Attestation -- Stackable attestors enriching identity with agent provenance, capabilities, and SBOM verification
- Kagenti Blog -- Technical deep-dives on agent identity, AuthBridge architecture, and zero-trust patterns
- kagenti.io -- Project site, architecture, and getting-started guides
Contact: mrsabath at gmail.com | Ask me about: SPIFFE/SPIRE, zero-trust for AI agents, Kubernetes workload identity