A financial-services team is deploying a multi-agent solution in Microsoft Foundry. A research agent must read SharePoint knowledge bases, while a settlement agent must call a payment API. Security requires that a compromise of the research agent must not allow access to payment credentials. Which design best enforces this Zero Trust boundary?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Correct answer: A. Think of each agent as a different employee with a different badge. If the research badge only opens the library, stealing it never opens the vault. Per-agent managed identities plus least-privilege RBAC and Key Vault policies are how you stop lateral movement when one agent is compromised—exactly what Zero Trust multi-agent design demands on Azure.
Full Explanation
In multi-agent systems on Azure and Microsoft Foundry, Zero Trust requires per-agent identity scoping so a breach of one agent cannot reach another agent’s tools or secrets. Option A is correct: each agent gets its own managed identity, RBAC grants only the Microsoft Graph or SharePoint permissions the research agent needs, and Key Vault access policies (or RBAC on vault secrets) expose payment credentials only to the settlement agent’s identity.
Option B is incorrect because a shared managed identity collapses the trust boundary. Any token obtained by the research agent can call the payment API, enabling lateral movement.
Option C is incorrect because a shared environment-variable bag is a secrets anti-pattern. Every process that can read the bag inherits every secret, and environment variables are not rotated, audited, or ACL’d like Key Vault.
Option D is incorrect because granting Contributor so one agent can mint credentials for another violates least privilege and creates a privilege-escalation path; agents should never act as identity providers for peer agents.
Exam tip: When a scenario stresses isolation between agents with different data sensitivity, look for separate managed identities and scoped Key Vault access—not shared credentials or broad Contributor roles.