Agent Authorization Document

Microsoft Entra Agent ID gives agents an identity. Within it, a Sponsor records the user or supported group accountable in the platform for an agent's purpose, lifecycle decisions, and access reviews, and an Owner is the technical administrator responsible for configuration and operations. The platform permits a group in that role; this record requires the organization to map it to one named accountable human. Neither role documents what the agent was formally authorized to do before it was deployed. Microsoft Purview helps organizations search and retain audit evidence for AI activity. Those systems help answer what an agent did, when it acted, and what resources it could reach. They do not capture the business authorization decision that should exist before an agent is deployed.

The Consequence Owner named across this framework library maps to the Business Sponsor field in this record. For a Tier 2 agent (tier definitions in Who Owns the Agent?, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20481551) they are typically the same individual. For a Tier 3 agent with external communications, financial transaction execution, or record modification authority in regulated systems, the Consequence Owner is a distinct individual at a higher level of the accountability structure, and their name is recorded in the Business Sponsor field with the Tier 3 distinction noted. The Accuracy Owner and the Suspension Authority required by the Disposition Protocol are recorded in this document's accountability group as two additional named entries when the agent operates under a Disposition Protocol, which every production agent should. One record. Every named role in it. Role consolidation scales the model. For a Tier 1 agent, one named individual may hold Business Sponsor, Consequence Owner, Accuracy Owner, and Suspension Authority together, provided the record names them in each capacity. For Tier 2, the Suspension Authority must be a different individual from the Accuracy Owner, because the person who raises the signal should not be the only person who can act on it. For Tier 3, all roles are distinct named individuals and the Consequence Owner sits at a level with board access. Five role names describe five obligations, not five headcount. For large Tier 3 portfolios, the Consequence Owner may own a defined class of agents rather than a single one, with the record still naming them on each agent, and the roles map onto existing titles, the Accuracy Owner to the head of model risk, the Suspension Authority to operations leadership, rather than creating new headcount.

The value of this document is that it predates the incident, and predating must be provable. Store the completed record in a system that timestamps creation and preserves versions immutably, such as a document management system with retention holds or a repository with a signed commit history. A record that can be silently edited or backdated satisfies every field in this template and fails the only test that matters. When an examiner asks whether the authorization preceded the deployment, the storage system answers, not the author. Retention follows the strictest obligation that applies to the agent's context, and a record under legal hold is preserved regardless of schedule.