# OpenAI's Fotis Chantzis on why identity protocols weren't designed for agents

DevFeed: [OpenAI's Fotis Chantzis on why identity protocols weren't designed for agents](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/openai-s-fotis-chantzis-on-why-identity-protocols-weren-t-designed-for-agents-1894.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://1password.com/blog/agent-identity-protocols>)

Author: info@1password.com (Chris Fowler)

Published: 2026-05-19T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog on 1Password Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-on-1password-blog.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [Authorization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/authorization.md>), [Authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/authentication.md>), [OAuth](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/oauth.md>), [OpenID connect (OIDC)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/oidc.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [OpenAI](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/openai.md>)

Tags: [agent](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agent.md>), [agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agents.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/authentication.md>), [authorization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/authorization.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [oauth](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/oauth.md>), [oidc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/oidc.md>), [podcast](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/podcast.md>), [podcasts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/podcasts.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains why authentication and authorization protocols designed for stable human behavior do not adequately control autonomous agents. It discusses agents expanding their scope, accessing new files and APIs, and the need for continuous authorization, secrets handling, identity controls, and auditing in production.

## Source excerpt

Zero-Shot Learning is a podcast for AI builders, hosted by Nancy Wang, Chief Technology Officer at 1Password, and Dev Tagare, Senior Director and Head of Engineering for Gemini Enterprise & Business at Google. Together, they've built and scaled AI systems at the infrastructure and product layers and bring a builder's perspective to every conversation. The name, zero-shot learning, is an AI concept about applying existing knowledge to new tasks without specific training. For this show, it's also the premise. Each episode features in-depth discussions with the people building today's most advanced AI systems, unpacking how agentic architectures are designed, and how teams handle the realities of shipping systems into production. Authentication is built on the assumption that identity can be verified once and trusted for a specified period. Over time, the security industry has gotten very good at validating that trust through a chain of identity providers, certificates, and infrastructure that confirm that a user is who it claims to be at login. Authentication assumes that identity and intent will stay relatively stable and predictable because it was designed for people whose behavior is largely stable and predictable. Agents break that assumption entirely. They act non-deterministically, starting with one task and expanding their scope as they work, accessing new files and APIs, making their identities difficult to track. When an agent acts autonomously on a person's behalf, the question is no longer whether it can log in; it's how it uses access after it does. To establish a control plane for agents, Nancy asks, "If you're a CTO and you've been told to deploy internal agents into production, what are the no-excuses minimum controls for identity, authorization, secrets handling, and audit? Fotis Chantzis, Agent Security Lead at OpenAI, joined Zero-Shot Learning, 1Password's AI builder podcast, to talk through why the protocols built for human identity don't hold up un