In enterprise environments, identity effectively became the control plane once network perimeters broke down (e.g. zero trust, et cetera).

I’m seeing a similar pattern emerging on the public internet via age verification and safety regulation, but with identity moving closer to the access layer itself.

Not just: “Are you over 18?”

But: identity assertions are becoming part of how access is granted at the OS/device/app store level.

From a security perspective, this seems to introduce some new attack surfaces:

• high-value identity tokens at the OS/device level
• new trust boundaries between apps, OS, and third-party verifiers
• incentives to target device compromise or token reuse rather than account-level bypass
• potential centralisation of identity providers as enforcement points

Questions I’m trying to think through:

• Does this effectively make identity providers the new perimeter/control plane?
• How would you model this system (closer to DRM, identity federation, or something else?)
• What are the likely failure modes if this layer becomes centralised?
• Are decentralised / on-device credentials actually viable from a security standpoint, or do they just shift the attack surface?

Curious how people here would threat model this or where the obvious breakpoints are.