OAuth 2.0 Security Patterns for AI-Augmented Microservices: Challenges and Design Principles
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63282/3050-922X.IJERET-V3I2P122Keywords:
OAuth 2.0, AI Agents, Microservices Security, Zero Trust Architecture, Token Management, Enterprise Security, Agentic Systems, Service Mesh, Identity Management, Authorization PatternsAbstract
When building enterprise microservices architectures with the advent of AI agents and automated flows, new security concerns emerge that were unforeseen by the original OAuth 2.0 framework. The paper extensively reviews security risks in service meshes used in an agentic context and explores the concepts of scope management, agentic identity verification and least privilege security in the context of services, reviewing the best practices and approaches for each of these areas. We share a design principles list that has been practically proven as suitable to safely integrate AI agent interactions into an existing OAuth 2.0 based framework within a large scale-retail enterprise. Empirical results confirm that naive OAuth deployments have important attack surfaces when run with AI agents working under delegated authority, and offer design solutions that ensure security guarantees are not lost, while maintaining the benefits of AI through automation.
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