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Layer 9 of 20

Identity & Access Control

Identity primitives and policy enforcement: authentication, authorization, session management, RBAC/ABAC, and tenant boundaries.

Responsibilities

  • Authenticate users/services and enforce authorization decisions.
  • Manage sessions, tokens, and tenant boundaries.
  • Provide policy hooks (RBAC/ABAC) consistently across surfaces.

Key interfaces

  • Authn methods (passwordless, OAuth, passkeys) and session contracts.
  • Authorization policy evaluation (roles, attributes, scopes).
  • Tenant isolation identifiers and enforcement points.

Operational signals

These are the measurements that tell you whether this layer is healthy in production.

  • Login success/failure rates and auth latency.
  • Token/session refresh errors and clock skew issues.
  • Suspicious activity signals (impossible travel, abuse patterns).

Failure modes

  • Privilege escalation due to missing checks.
  • Session fixation or replay vulnerabilities.
  • Inconsistent tenant scoping across services.

Production readiness checklist

  • Centralize policy checks; add audit logs for sensitive actions.
  • Use short-lived tokens with refresh; rotate secrets/keys.
  • Validate tenant scoping in every data access path.
Identity & Access Control — HOWFAR Architecture — HOWFAR