10ms or Less: The New Standard for Enterprise Permission Control

Modern enterprises run on speed and security. But what if someone who should be able to view a page or act on a resource can’t get permission fast enough?

Every millisecond counts, especially when it comes to authorization, where a small delay can frustrate users, slow down transactions, and reduce revenue. According to Farhan Khan, “current estimates from Akamai show that a 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. For an ecommerce site making $100,000 per day, that adds up to $2.5 million in lost sales every year.” As applications scale to handle thousands or millions of requests per second, permission checks must keep up—without becoming a bottleneck.

Oso was built for this challenge. We deliver authorization as a service with sub-10ms latency and a 99.99% SLA, giving developers a robust API to answer permission questions instantly. In this article, we’ll explore why low-latency authorization is now the gold standard, how Oso achieves it, and what it means for your business.

Summary

• Why low-latency permission management matters for enterprise applications
• The technical challenges of achieving sub-10ms authorization
• How Oso’s architecture delivers high performance and reliability
• A comparison of access control models (RBAC, ReBAC, ABAC) and Oso’s support
• Real-world implementation tips and code examples
• Key differentiators that set Oso apart

When Latency Becomes a Problem

Authorization isn’t just a one-time security check—it’s in the critical path of every user interaction. That means latency is felt everywhere:

• In fintech apps approving a trade
• In SaaS dashboards loading dynamic views
• In e-commerce carts showing what users can see or buy

In these systems, even sub-100ms delays can break the user flow. And as more companies move to fine-grained, dynamic permissions (like relationship- or attribute-based access), the number of authorization checks skyrockets.

At scale, that means:

• Thousands of checks per second across microservices
• Latency compounding with each service call
• Lost conversions and degraded UX if authorization becomes a bottleneck

That’s why low-latency authorization isn’t an optional feature—it’s core infrastructure. 

For high-traffic APIs, even a 10ms delay can add up to thousands of compute hours per year. If your authorization service lags, your entire application feels slow. That’s why sub-10ms is the new benchmark. With sub-10ms performance, your app’s speed can stay in your hands, not in your access control system.

The Technical Challenge: Achieving Sub-10ms Authorization

So, what makes low-latency authorization so hard? The answer lies in the complexity of modern access control.

Common bottlenecks

• Database lookups: Traditional systems store permissions in databases, requiring extra queries for each authorization check. Under heavy load, these lookups become a major bottleneck.
• Complex logic: Multi-layered roles, hierarchies, and conditions increase computational overhead.
• Network distance: Relying on external services or cloud APIs adds unpredictable latency.

What’s the solution?

To achieve sub-10ms authorization, you need to:

• Deploy authorization close to your application, minimizing network hops
• Use stateless or locally cached systems to avoid slow state synchronization
• Optimize for deterministic, testable logic that doesn’t require multiple round-trips

Oso’s Approach: High-Performance Authorization as a Service

Oso is built for speed, reliability, and developer experience. Here’s how we do it.

Globally distributed, built for scale

Oso Cloud is designed from the ground up for high performance, with a globally distributed, low-latency architecture built on Kafka and SQLite. We’re deployed across most major regions in the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific - 12+ regions and growing - and can spin up a new region on request. So if you deploy your application in, say, us-east-1 and us-west-2, Oso has you covered. We replicate your authorization data to both locations, ensuring that authorization decisions are returned in under 10ms no matter where your users are located.

Kafka ensures reliable, ordered replication of permission changes, while SQLite provides fast, local reads. This approach enables consistent performance, even during traffic spikes or network partitions.

For example, Oyster, a global HR platform, relies on this architecture to serve users across continents—without performance degradation.

“Oso Cloud deploys nodes at the edge, across dozens of regions and availability zones all over the world to ensure high uptime, low latency, and throughput that is auto-scaled to handle traffic spikes.”
— Oyster Case Study

Tamr, a data company operating at scale, also observed:

“Oso handles our queries with consistent sub-10ms latency no matter where our users are in the world, and all with no downtime.”
— Nick Laferriere, Head of Engineering at Tamr

Local Authorization, no syncing required

As impressive as sub-10ms latency is, a local operation is even faster. That’s why Oso can run authorization checks locally, right alongside your application. This eliminates the need for external network calls and avoids the latency of remote services. 

Deterministic, testable framework

Our framework is deterministic and fully testable. You can debug and validate your permission logic before it ever hits production. This reduces the risk of unexpected slowdowns or permission errors.

Optimized policy engine

Oso’s Polar engine is designed to evaluate authorization rules efficiently. It minimizes condition checks, handles recursive relationships (like folder or org hierarchies), and avoids performance pitfalls even in high-volume scenarios—like users who access thousands of resources.

Advanced lookup optimization and caching

Oso doesn’t cache the result of an authorization decision like “Can Hazal read this document?” Instead, we ask our logic engine "How can any user read any document?" which gives us a more generalized set of conditions to evaluate. When a request comes in, we substitute the actual values (e.g. “Hazal”, “doc A”), evaluate the rule plan, and respond—fast.

This lets us avoid redundant computation without relying on potentially stale permission caches. It also means:

• We do real-time lookups, not stale result reuse.
• Query planning is optimized to fetch the minimal necessary data (e.g., fetching all resources a user can access vs checking one resource).
• We can handle fine-grained, dynamic access control efficiently—even when permissions change frequently.

For example, when a customer asks, “What documents can Hazal see?”, we optimize that query path separately from “Can Hazal view document X?”—and both run with sub-10ms latency.

Flexible access control models

Oso supports multiple access control models out of the box:

• RBAC (Role-Based Access Control): Assign permissions based on user roles
• ReBAC (Relationship-Based Access Control): Model complex relationships between users and resources
• ABAC (Attribute-Based Access Control): Use user and resource attributes for fine-grained control

You can mix and match these models to fit your application’s needs, all while maintaining sub-10ms response times.

A sample implementation would look like below:

actor User { }

resource Organization {
  roles = ["admin", "member"];
}

resource Repository {
  permissions = [
    "read",
    "manage_jobs"
  ];
  roles = ["reader", "maintainer"];
  relations = { organization: Organization };

  "reader" if "member" on "organization";
  "maintainer" if "admin" on "organization";
  "reader" if "maintainer";

  "read" if "reader";
  "manage_jobs" if "maintainer";
}

This policy enables the following:
- Users get access to repositories based on their role in the parent organization.
- "member"s of an organization can "read" repositories.
-"admin"s of an organization can "manage_jobs" on repositories.
- Roles cascade from the organization to the repository automatically.

This model avoids duplicating role assignments at the repo level, and it’s mixing RBAC and ReBAC. You can extend this with attributes or more relationships for more complex scenarios.

Comparing Access Control Models: RBAC vs ReBAC vs ABAC

Choosing the right access control model is critical for performance. Here’s a quick comparison:

‍

• RBAC is simple and fast, ideal for most early use cases.
• ReBAC handles scenarios like social networks or multi-tenant SaaS.
• ABAC allows for dynamic, context-aware permissions.

Oso lets you implement any of these models—or combine them—without sacrificing speed. Its engine is designed to evaluate even fine-grained ReBAC and ABAC rules with sub-10ms latency.

Real-World Implementation: Oso Cloud in Action

Let’s walk through a typical integration process:

1. Use Oso with your database: Oso supports direct integration with popular databases, so you don’t need to sync permissions data.
2. Define your policy: Use Oso’s declarative language to express your access rules.
3. Query the Oso API: Check permissions in real time, with responses in under 10ms.

Example: A SaaS platform uses Oso to enforce tenant-level RBAC. When a user requests access to a resource, Oso checks their role and attributes instantly, returning a decision before the UI even finishes rendering.

Implementation Tips

1. Deploy Oso as close to your application as possible for minimal latency
   
   • This is handled automatically when you deploy with Oso Cloud
2. Use Oso’s test suite to validate policies before deployment 
3. Monitor authorization metrics to catch performance regressions early

What Sets Oso Apart

Oso isn’t just fast—it’s flexible, reliable, and built for enterprise needs. Here’s what makes us different:

• Sub-10ms latency: Consistent, predictable performance at scale
• No syncing required: Local authorization with direct database integration
• Deployment flexibility: Cloud, hybrid, or on-premises (coming soon)—your choice
• Multiple models: RBAC, ReBAC and ABAC in a single framework
• Deterministic and testable: Debug and validate before production

For developers, this means you can focus on building features, not wrestling with complex permission logic. For enterprises, it means you get security and speed—without compromise.

“Low-latency authorization is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a requirement for any application that values user experience and scalability.” — Oso Engineering Team

Conclusion: The Future of Permission Management Is Fast

Sub-10ms authorization is setting a new standard for enterprise permission control. As applications grow more complex and user expectations rise, slow permission checks are no longer acceptable. Oso delivers the speed, flexibility, and reliability you need—whether you’re building a SaaS platform, a fintech app, or an internal enterprise tool.

Ready to see how Oso can help you achieve high-performance permission management? Explore our documentation, try out Oso Cloud, or contact us for a demo. Your users—and your engineers—will notice the difference.