A control plane is the set of tools and interfaces that define workflows, manage infrastructure, and configure policies. Because these mechanisms govern system behavior, agents should not control them as freely as operational tools. section 18.5
A safer architecture separates permitted operations from protected configuration:
- Allow agents to trigger predefined workflows while forbidding them from creating, updating, or deleting workflow definitions. section 18.5
- Restrict infrastructure changes and authorization-policy modifications to authorized principals. section 18.5
- Use logs, analysis, standardized policy evaluation, and runtime decisions to improve authorization as systems become distributed and automated. section 19.10
Childproofing automation
An internal automation platform lets agents start approved workflows but blocks changes to automation definitions. A Cedar policy forbids Agent principals from using automation.create, automation.update, or automation.delete against Automation resources. section 18.5
forbid (
principal is Agent,
action in [
Action::"automation.create",
Action::"automation.update",
Action::"automation.delete"
],
resource is Automation
);
The policy listing makes the control-plane boundary concrete by separating workflow execution from automation-definition changes. section 18.5
