Comparison
Ping establishes who your AI agents are. PlainID controls what they can access, do, and expose at the moment of every action. Where Ping sets the identity boundary, PlainID enforces what happens inside it.
Ping's Identity for AI suite pairs Agent Gateway with PingAuthorize. Here's where it diverges from PlainID, capability by capability.
Full coverage: End-to-end
True end-to-end control across Agentic, Data, APIs, Microservices and Apps: Prompt → Data → Tools → Output.
Partial coverage: API boundary
Token-based, or in-application, for APIs only.
Full coverage: Row, column & field
Fine-grained enforcement, including RAG pipelines and vector databases.
Partial coverage: API-only filtering
No visibility into unstructured AI data or RAG pipelines.
Full coverage: Masks generated output
Intercepts and masks sensitive data in LLM-generated responses before delivery.
Partial coverage: Structured fields only
Can mask structured API response fields; no visibility into synthesized LLM output.
Full coverage: Bound at runtime
Every action tied to human and agent identities, with clear ownership and scope.
Gap / limitation: Governed separately
No binding of an agent's action to the end user behind it.
Full coverage: Zero Standing Privileges
Proactive enforcement, with access granted per action.
Gap / limitation: Static least privilege
OAuth scopes set at delegation time.
Full coverage: All agents
Enforces on every agent, including those spawned dynamically at runtime.
Partial coverage: Registered agents
Dynamically spawned agents may be out of scope.
Full coverage: Business-context aware
Enforced before data is retrieved or exposed, with built-in output masking, for all data types.
Partial coverage: Table or object level
No business context.
Full coverage: Full transaction
Controls access, adapts parameter input, and masks the response.
Partial coverage: Access only
Controls API/MCP access with tokens and scopes.
Full coverage: Unified
Out-of-the-box enforcement across APIs, data, and AI agent frameworks.
Partial coverage: Two products
Agent Gateway and PingAuthorize, each purchased and integrated separately.
Ping's Identity for AI suite does what IAM should do for the agent era. That's necessary infrastructure. But a confirmed identity is not an authorization decision. When an agent acts, a different question applies: should this action, on this data, in this context, be permitted right now?
Identity provider
PlainID control plane
50%+
Of successful cybersecurity attacks against AI agents will exploit access control issues through 2029 — Gartner, "How to Secure Custom-Built AI Agents," 11 June 2025
2B+
Authorization decisions processed annually, built for high-scale, real-time enforcement across complex environments
F500
Fortune 500 enterprises trust PlainID to secure millions of identities, recognized by Gartner and KuppingerCole in authorization and security platforms
Where Ping establishes the identity boundary, PlainID enforces what happens within it.
Agent Gateway and PingAuthorize secure the tool and API boundary. PlainID blocks unauthorized intent before execution, filters what data can be accessed, governs which tools agents can invoke, and masks what is exposed.
PingAuthorize provides ABAC at the structured API layer, but has no visibility into the LLM's context window. PlainID enforces fine-grained controls at the unstructured data layer: pre-retrieval RAG filtering keeps the agent from retrieving what it shouldn't, and dynamic output masking redacts sensitive data in the response before it reaches the user.
Ping links an agent token to a human user at registration. A delegation record is not runtime binding. PlainID brings the initiating human's real-time entitlements, role, and clearance into every downstream decision. An agent cannot access what its human cannot access, checked at every call.
Least privilege at the delegation scope still relies on standing permissions. PlainID grants access just-in-time, per action, based on current context, purpose, and policy, and revokes it immediately after use.
Comparison
Identity governance vs. runtime authorization, compared.
Comparison
Where access management ends and authorization begins.
Comparison
Policy-based access control, side by side.
PlainID's Runtime Authorization Platform is designed for how AI systems actually operate: accessing data, invoking tools, and making decisions across systems in real time.
Every request is evaluated in the moment it happens, not just once at login.
Access is tied to every action's actual intent, not a static role or standing token.
Consistent policies applied across APIs, data, and AI — evaluating the human user, the AI agent, and the intent together.
Access exists only when it's needed, for the exact purpose required, and is revoked immediately after use.
Ping Identity verifies identity: it registers agents as trusted identities, scopes their delegated authority, and enforces least privilege at the tool layer. PlainID controls what AI agents can actually do across the entire agentic flow — blocking unauthorized intent before execution, filtering what data can be accessed, governing which tools agents can invoke, and masking what is exposed.
No. PlainID works alongside Ping. Ping establishes the identity boundary; PlainID enforces what happens inside it. Enterprises running Ping can add PlainID to govern what their agents access, retrieve, and expose without replacing their IAM.
PingAuthorize provides attribute-based access control at the structured API layer and can mask structured API response fields. It has no visibility into unstructured AI data, RAG pipelines, or synthesized LLM output. PlainID enforces at the data layer, filters retrieval before it happens, and masks sensitive data in AI-generated responses.
Delegated authority links an agent token to a human user at registration. Runtime binding brings that human's current entitlements, role, and clearance into every decision the agent makes downstream, so an agent can never access what its initiating human cannot — checked at the moment of every call.
PlainID enforces on all agents, including those spawned dynamically at runtime. Identity-registration models enforce on registered agents, so dynamically spawned sub-agents may operate outside their scope.
Extend Ping with real-time authorization across AI, APIs, data, and applications. You don't need to replace your IAM stack.
