All IAM glossary termsAuthorization · glossary

OPA (Open Policy Agent)

Also known as: Open Policy Agent

Definition

OPA (Open Policy Agent) is the dominant open-source Policy Decision Point — a CNCF graduated project that uses the Rego policy language for fine-grained authorization decisions.

In more depth

OPA decouples policy from application code. Applications query OPA with input (user, action, resource, environment); OPA evaluates Rego policies and returns the decision. It's widely used in Kubernetes (Gatekeeper), API gateways, service meshes, and microservices.

For enterprise IAM, OPA provides a unified policy plane across cloud-native workloads. Commercial offerings (Styra DAS) add management UI + audit + observability on top.

Related terms

Want the work, not just the definition?

We staff + deliver across IAM.

Talk to a practice leadMore glossary terms