Identity
Establish what autonomous principal is acting, whether human, workload, service, agent or machine.
- Principal identity
- Origin
- Attribution
Authority that follows
every autonomous action.
Autonomous systems need more than credentials. ProofGrid provides identity, delegated authority, policy, continuous trust, runtime control and verification for consequential autonomous actions.
The Security Model Changed
Identity is necessary.
Authority is the harder problem.
Traditional identity and access management helps establish who or what authenticated. Autonomous systems add a further question: what is this principal allowed to cause?
ProofGrid connects authentication and access control to delegated authority and runtime decisions alongside identity and security systems.
Traditional Access
- 01Identity
- 02Role
- 03Permission
- 04Access
Autonomous Authority
- 01Identity
- 02Delegation
- 03Purpose
- 04Context
- 05Policy
- 06Runtime trust
- 07Action authority
- 08Verification
Who authorized this principal?
What was delegated, and for what purpose?
Which constraints and expiration apply?
Can it delegate further?
Has risk changed since authorization?
Does this action remain within its authority?
Six Interlocking Layers
From identity
to verification.
ProofGrid is an available authority platform that connects identity context, delegated authority, policy, continuous trust, runtime control and verification; the model below shows how these layers relate.
Authority
Represent scope, purpose, expiration and inherited constraints as authority moves between principals.
- Delegation
- Scope
- Expiry
Policy
Define envelopes around systems, tools, data, actions, value, geography, time and operating state.
- Constraints
- Purpose
- Boundaries
Continuous Trust
Reassess authority as credential risk, behavior, posture, context or delegation status changes.
- Signals
- Context
- Reassessment
Runtime Control
Make a decision at the point of consequential action: allow, deny, escalate or degrade.
- ALLOW
- DENY
- ESCALATE
- DEGRADE
Verification
Preserve evidence of the principal, authority chain, policy, context, decision, request and outcome.
- Decision evidence
- Outcome
- Review
What does DEGRADE mean?
Limited safe capabilities can remain available while higher-risk authority is removed. For example, read access may continue while write or remediation authority is temporarily revoked.
Integration Boundary
ProofGrid controls authority.
It does not replace your security stack.
ProofGrid uses relevant identity and trust context to govern autonomous actions and preserve decision evidence. Detection, endpoint protection and execution remain with the systems built for those jobs.
Input / Signal Systems
- IAM & cloud identity
- SIEM & EDR / XDR
- Threat intelligence
- Agent runtimes & MCP tools
- Device & machine systems
The ProofGrid
Identity → Authority → Policy → Continuous Trust → Runtime Control → VerificationExecution Systems
- Enterprise applications
- Security tools
- Cloud systems & APIs
- Industrial systems
- Robotics & autonomous software
Explore the Platform
Follow the authority chain.
Discuss the Authority Model