# AWS releases TOLAP for object-level access control in AI agents

> **Key takeaway:** TOLAP provides a standardized way to enforce fine-grained data security, such as row and column filtering, directly at the tool level for AI agents.

**Published:** 2026-09-22T16:31:39+00:00 
**Source:** AWS Open Source Blog 
**Category:** bigtech-foss 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/tolap-object-level-access-control-for-ai-agent-tools.html 

## Summary
AWS has open-sourced the Tool-Object Level Access Protocol (TOLAP) under the Apache-2.0 license. The project addresses a security gap where AI agents can access unauthorized data through tools even when IAM or OAuth are active. TOLAP enables fine-grained control over specific data objects like rows, columns, and fields across databases, APIs, and object storage.

## Technical components of TOLAP
- **Versioned policy schema** covering databases, APIs, knowledge bases, and object storage.
- **Enforcement SDKs** for .NET, Python, and TypeScript with zero external dependencies in core packages.
- **Reference policy server** and an authoring console for policy management.
- **Fourteen integrations** including LangChain, Semantic Kernel, Bedrock Agents, and OpenAI Agents.
- **Most-restrictive-wins merging logic** for handling multiple overlapping policies.
- **Source-point enforcement** that applies security at the data origin rather than the model output layer.

## Why it matters
TOLAP provides a standardized security layer for developers building AI agents, preventing prompt injection from exposing sensitive data that has already entered the model's context window.