AWS has presented a detailed architecture aimed at preventing compromised or manipulated AI agents from accessing data beyond the original user permissions. The proposal centers on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, which transfers authorization decisions away from the agent and into the infrastructure and connected services.
The primary risk emerges when an agent is granted broad credentials to query databases, repositories, and SaaS platforms. In the event of a prompt injection attack or application failure, the model could attempt to retrieve information the user was never authorized to view.
Under the demonstrated architecture, users authenticate through Amazon Cognito and receive JWT tokens containing contextual details such as department or role. The AgentCore Runtime validates these tokens before executing the agent, rejecting any requests that do not match the configured rules.
For database operations, particularly with DynamoDB, AWS issues temporary credentials linked to the individual user via AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity. IAM policies then restrict access exclusively to authorized data partitions, ensuring that a manipulated agent cannot bypass departmental separation controls.
The central principle is to maintain the agent strictly as an orchestrator rather than allowing it to decide access rights. Even if its behavior is altered by an attack, infrastructure-level controls continue to limit permitted operations.
