Best practice for authenticating external application with ISC APIs

Identity Security Cloud (ISC) ISC Discussion and Questions
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1

Hi Team,

I have an external application that needs to interact with SailPoint Identity Security Cloud APIs.

I would like to confirm the recommended authentication approach for this use case.

From the documentation, I understand that:

  • ISC supports OAuth 2.0 authentication

  • Access tokens can be obtained via Client Credentials or Personal Access Tokens (PATs)

  • PATs are tied to a user identity and inherit that user’s permissions

My questions are:

  1. For a machine-to-machine integration, is it recommended to:

    • Use a dedicated service account + PAT, or something else?

  2. Is there any official guidance on when to prefer PAT over OAuth client credentials in ISC?

  3. ISC have a concept of a “machine identity,” or is a service account (non-human identity) the standard approach?

Any best practices or reference documentation would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

2

Hi @RadhikaM ,

ISC supports OAuth 2.0 authentication; however, many ISC API endpoints require user context. As a result, OAuth 2.0 (client credentials) cannot be used for those endpoints, and only a Personal Access Token (PAT) can be used.

Currently, the recommended approach is to:

  • Use a dedicated service account

  • Generate a PAT for that account

  • Define specific scopes for the PAT (instead of granting all scopes by default)

Reference : Creating Service Accounts for SailPoint API Automations - Content / Video Library - SailPoint Developer Community

However, SailPoint has indicated that this approach is being deprecated in favor of Machine Identity.

The challenge today is that Machine Identity does not yet support:

  • PAT usage

  • Fine-grained permission assignment

  • Access requests

SailPoint has mentioned that additional features are planned for Machine Identity, which may address these limitations in the future.

For now, the most practical approach remains: Service account + scoped PAT

Looking ahead, Machine Identity is expected to become the recommended model once it is more fully supported.

Thanks.

3

From what I’ve seen working with ISC APIs, it really comes down to one thing: user context vs no user context.

Client Credentials → no user context
PAT → user-level permissions

1)For a machine-to-machine integration, is it recommended to: Use a dedicated service account + PAT, or something else?

Ans: It depends on the API you’re calling. If the endpoint requires user-level permissions, then yes, using a dedicated service account + PAT is the right approach.

“API endpoints that require user level permissions require the use of Personal access tokens (PATs).”
Source: https://developer.sailpoint.com/docs/api/authentication/

  1. Is there any official guidance on when to prefer PAT over OAuth client credentials in ISC?

Ans: Again, this comes back to context.

Client Credentials → system-to-system, no user context (Simple scripts, quick testing, read-only operations that don’t need user permissions)

PAT → when the API needs user-level permissions (External apps, long-running integrations, anything touching admin operations)

for your external application? Go PAT. You’ll hit fewer walls. The only reason to use pure Client Credentials is if you’re building something super simple and you want to avoid creating a service account. Not worth the hassle for most integrations.

PAT works for identity or admin-related APIs. where, Client credentials work fine for simple automation where user context is not needed

”Clients use the Client Credentials grant type to obtain access tokens without user involvement.”
Source: https://developer.sailpoint.com/docs/api/authentication/

  1. ISC have a concept of a “machine identity,” or is a service account (non-human identity) the standard approach?

Machine Identity and service account are different things.

Machine Identity is a governance feature. You use it to organize and track service accounts, bots, and machine accounts in your org. Super useful for compliance and audit. But it’s not for API authentication.

For API integration? You still need a traditional service account (a regular ISC user). Generate a PAT from that user, and you’re good to go.

I heard that SailPoint’s working on making Machine Identity support API authentication directly, but for now you still need a standard service account & generate a PAT from it.

"An application identity is a type of machine identity that represents a program or service that related machine accounts are grouped within...allows users to organize and oversee their organization's service accounts, bots, and other machine accounts"

Hope this helps :slightly_smiling_face:

4

Hi @RadhikaM

From my experience, it is better to use the PAT credentials via a dedicated service account since a majority of the APIs require user context (which OAuth 2.0 does not support). For additional security, it is a good practice to provide only the required user level for the service account and to scope each PAT to only the required APIs in use.

For your external application, the recommended approach would be:

  • Create a dedicated service account (non-human identity) in ISC with only the user level needed (e.g., SOURCE_ADMIN rather than ORG_ADMIN if possible).
  • Generate a PAT from that service account, scoped to the minimum required scopes for your integration.
  • Use the Client Credentials grant flow with that PAT’s Client ID and Secret to obtain short-lived JWT access tokens at runtime.
  • Apply the principle of least privilege — assign only the specific scopes your endpoints require, rather than defaulting to sp:scopes:all

As @baoussounda has mentioned, Creating Service Accounts for SailPoint API Automations is a good resource to get started.

5

for machine-to-machine integrations the current recommended approach is a dedicated service account with a PAT scoped to only the permissions your integration needs. Avoid using a real user’s PAT since if that user leaves or their access changes, your integration breaks.