# A Gateway Architecture for Enterprise MCP Authentication: Unifying Heterogeneous Auth, Identity Delegation, and the User / Non-User Persona Problem

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10760 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10760/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 0 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Aug 2026.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Zero-Trust Authorization and Discovery for Enterprise MCP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22573/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has become the de-facto interface for connecting LLM agents to enterprise tools, and adoption has been explosive: within a year, large organizations went from zero to dozens of internally built MCP servers. That speed created a governance crisis. Each team implemented authentication independently -- some with no auth, some with API keys, some with full OAuth -- producing a fragmented landscape with no consistent way to authorize callers, track who did what, or offboard a departing employee across the fleet. This paper reports an industry deployment that resolves the crisis with a centralized MCP gateway: a single aggregation, governance, and authentication layer that fronts every downstream MCP server. We make four contributions grounded in production experience. First, a two-axis authentication model crossing persona (interactive user vs. automated non-user) with credential type (no-auth, static/dynamic API key, PKCE, client credentials, platform app-context). Second, a gateway authentication layer supporting three enterprise SSO grants and three token-provisioning models: Bring-Your-Own-Token, Generate-Your-Own-Token, and delegated OAuth via RFC 8693 token exchange. Third, three end-to-end identity flows -- User-to-OAuth2, Non-user-to-Service-Account, and User-to-Service-Account -- composing client, gateway, and server. Fourth, the deployment evolution from CDN/WAF/edge perimeter to private MCP tunnels and enterprise-wide connectors. The architecture is in production, fronting dozens of MCP servers across web, desktop, custom-SDK, and low-code clients.