Measure authorization latency

Action-time checks need latency metrics that reveal both performance and unsafe bypass.

01 / The operating case

What changes in a real workflow?

A payment agent’s authorization p99 rises during peak traffic, causing timeouts.

Trace the authority boundary
  1. 01Authority origin
  2. 02Task and grant
  3. 03Current decision
  4. 04Observed outcome

02 / Decision contract

What the executor must check

Measure PEP-to-PDP time, policy-evaluation time, cache hit and stale hit, enforcement time and decision-to-effect gap by operation risk.

InputPrincipal · task · action · target
DecisionGrant ancestry · policy · current state
ResultEnforce · record · verify outcome

03 / Failure and evidence

What goes wrong, and what can be proven?

Failure mode

Teams disable checks to meet latency targets without measuring unauthorized effects.

Evidence to retain

Store trace IDs and aggregated percentiles without exposing protected arguments.

04 / Canonical scope

Why this reference stands alone

Decision observation focuses verdict behavior; this page owns the timing budget.

Illustrative implementation artifact

Latency budget decomposition

total = PEP capture + identity resolution + PDP evaluate
      + network + binding verification
measure p50,p95,p99 by action class
measure decision-to-effect gap separately

Primary references

Read the underlying material

Architecture discussion

Choose one consequential action and make its boundary explicit.

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