Identity Becomes Governed

Hardware-backed identity starts with attestation: a credential issued to a specific, verified device — not a JWT floating in memory. TPM 2.0 binds the credential to the silicon. The enterprise can prove, cryptographically, that the certificate presented by workstation WS-4471 was issued to that exact machine and has not been exported. This is the root of trust that FedRAMP High and DoD IL5 require and that most enterprises have not yet deployed at scale.

RFC 8693 (OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange) provides the protocol layer for agent delegation. When a human operator authorizes an agent to act on their behalf, RFC 8693 defines how the agent receives a derived token with constrained scope, audience, and lifetime. The agent cannot escalate its privileges. The audit trail shows the delegation chain: human → agent → action → resource.

SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone) extends this to workloads running anywhere — on-premises, in AWS, in a Kubernetes cluster on the edge. Every workload gets a SPIFFE Verifiable Identity Document (SVID). The SVID is short-lived, automatically rotated, and cryptographically verifiable. No shared secrets. No service accounts with full tenant scope.

I have led enterprise sales cycles for organizations deploying exactly this stack — from initial CISO alignment through procurement, professional services scoping, and QBR-based expansion. The buying committee spans CISO, VP of IT, the CISO's architect, procurement, and legal. The sales cycle runs 9–18 months. The expansion motion is predictable: land on workforce MFA, expand to privileged access, cross-sell machine identity, close the agentic layer.