Security

Authlane is a credential and capability control plane. Provider API traffic belongs in your SaaS runtime and must never pass through Authlane.

Identity and execution boundary

• Create authlane.user(externalUserId) only after authenticating the tenant user on your server.
• Derive externalUserId from that trusted server session. Never accept it from model output, tool arguments, URL parameters, or an untrusted browser body.
• Keep the tenant Authlane API key server-only and grant each workload the minimum scopes it needs.
• Never serialize an executable toolset or MCP server into browser data. Raw catalog and hosted connect-session URLs are the browser-facing contracts.
• Build a separate toolset or MCP server for each authenticated external user. Never cache or reuse one across identities or tenants.
• Custom integration adapters execute inside your SaaS trust boundary. Apply the same input validation, outbound-request allowlists, timeout, and audit controls as other privileged backend code.

Tenant isolation

Every SaaS resource is owned by an organization_id. End-user connections are uniquely addressed by (organization_id, external_user_id, service_id). Public API requests authenticate with a scoped API key whose organization is resolved server-side; callers cannot select another tenant.

PostgreSQL row-level security policies provide a database isolation boundary. Production deployments should run migrations with an owner role and the application with a separate non-owner role so the application cannot bypass RLS.

Credentials and leases

• Encrypt every secret record with a random data-encryption key and AES-256-GCM, then wrap that key with a versioned deployment KEK.
• Never log plaintext credentials, tenant API keys, OAuth codes, connect-session tokens, or credential leases.
• The SDK requests a fresh, access-only credential lease just in time for each allowed local tool invocation. Retain it only within that invocation; never serialize, persist, cache, inspect in telemetry, or reuse it.
• Credential leases require credentials:issue, are audited, and use Cache-Control: no-store, private.
• OAuth refresh tokens, ID tokens, and provider client secrets never leave Authlane. Only material needed for the current provider request crosses the control-plane boundary.
• Model-facing failures use fixed safe code and message values. Never return caught provider errors, response bodies, credential material, or stack traces to the model.
• Rotate tenant API keys and grant the smallest required set of scopes.

Authlane issues a fresh lease only when an allowed local tool callback executes. Listing connection status and tool definitions does not issue credentials. The integration then calls the provider directly from your SaaS process; Authlane is never a provider gateway or execution proxy.

Browser boundary

API keys never enter browser code. Your backend creates a short-lived connect session bound to:

• one externalUserId derived from the authenticated server session;
• an exact HTTPS parent origin;
• an explicit service allowlist;
• a short expiry.

Authlane stores only a hash of the connect-session token. The hosted UI validates the token and origin; the React embed validates both postMessage origin and iframe source. Plain HTTP origins are accepted only for localhost development.

OAuth

All OAuth authorization requests use PKCE and a cryptographically random state value. Callback state is single-use and expires. Provider client secrets and refresh tokens remain encrypted at rest.

Register the exact callback shown in the dashboard. Use TLS at the public ingress and set the same public origin in the Authlane environment configuration.

Operational controls

• Keep PostgreSQL and Redis on private networks.
• Require TLS at the ingress and use secure cookies in production.
• Rate-limit all public endpoints; Authlane uses Redis for distributed limits.
• Monitor authentication failures, credential reads, refresh failures, webhook backlog, and request latency without recording sensitive request or response values.
• Back up the database and versioned keyrings separately. Losing every retained data KEK makes stored credentials unrecoverable.
• Rotate webhook secrets and verify <timestamp>.<raw-body> signatures before parsing payloads.