What is Okta for AI Agents?
Okta for AI Agents is an identity security platform that gives AI agents first-class identities, enabling organizations to discover, onboard, protect, and govern them across any agent framework, cloud, or SaaS environment. It extends Okta's trusted identity foundation to autonomous systems, closing the security gap between human identity management and the rapidly expanding world of AI agents.
Key capabilities at a glance
- AI agent registry: Register AI agents as first-class identities across any framework, cloud, or SaaS environment
- Shadow AI agent discovery: Detect unmanaged agents through OAuth consent grant monitoring in managed browsers
- Least-privilege access: Replace hardcoded credentials with scoped, short-lived tokens issued on demand
- Access certification: Bring agents into existing certification workflows with full auditability
- Agent deactivation (kill switch): Instantly revoke rogue agents with an off switch and one audit trail across every connected system
Why AI agents need dedicated identity security
AI agents are reshaping the enterprise like the cloud and SaaS did, only faster, far less predictably, and without the identity foundation to secure them. As agents spread across your environment, they act on behalf of your users, connect to your most sensitive systems, and make autonomous decisions. When one goes rogue, the damage can spread to every system it touches—and there's often no kill switch.
The core problem: Organizations spent decades building identity security for humans, but AI agents operate autonomously, access sensitive systems, and make decisions without the same governance controls. This creates a critical security gap that traditional identity solutions weren’t designed to address.
88% of organizations report confirmed or suspected AI agent security incidents, yet only 22% have identities tied to their agents. That gap between how many organizations have been hit and how many are actually governing agents is the new attack surface.
The pattern is already playing out in breach reports. A recent incident at a well-known developer platform had no vulnerability and no infrastructure flaw, just an OAuth connection between an employee's corporate account and a third-party AI tool. When the AI tool was compromised, that pre-granted trust became the attack path: a straight line into the company's internal systems, API keys, tokens, and environment variables.
This was an identity failure. Specifically, how third-party apps and AI tools are granted access, what they can do, and for how long.
This is the new identity gap. Today, we're closing it.
Okta for AI Agents is now Generally Available, giving AI agents a first-class identity so you can discover, onboard, protect, and govern them across any agent framework, cloud, or SaaS environment.
The three questions every organization needs to answer
Securing AI agents comes down to three questions every security leader is being asked right now:
- Where are my agents?
- What can they connect to?
- What can they do?
Here's how Okta for AI Agents answers each one.
Okta for AI Agents: What’s included in GA
Where are my agents?
Discover and onboard AI agents across your environment
Before you can secure AI agents, you need to see them. Okta Universal Directory gives organizations one place to register AI agents across any agent framework, cloud, or SaaS environment. You can import known agents from apps you have already configured or from the Okta Integration Network. The same breadth, standards, and flexibility you expect from Okta now extend to AI agents.
- Manage the identities of homegrown agents: Bring custom-built agents into Universal Directory as first-class identities. Assign human owners, apply existing identity controls, and search for agents from a single source of truth.
- Import agents from external platforms: Prebuilt integrations enable you to bring known agents under governance in minutes. Okta for AI Agents integrates with Salesforce Agentforce, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, and ServiceNow AI Platform, with several more agent builder platform integrations coming soon.
- Discover shadow AI agents: Detect shadow AI agents by identifying new OAuth consent grants in managed Chrome browsers, enriching them with user context, and surfacing unmanaged agents in a centralized view. Support for additional browsers is coming soon.
Fig 1: Import agents from external platforms
What can they connect to?
Protect agent access with managed, least-privilege connections
Once you know where your agents are, you need to map everything they can reach and enforce policy on every connection. Okta for AI Agents replaces hardcoded credentials and standing access with scoped, short-lived tokens, issued only for what the agent needs and only for as long as it needs them.
Fig 2: Supported resource connection types
That protection extends across five resource types. Together, these capabilities help organizations enforce least privilege for AI agents in real time, without slowing down adoption.
| Resource type | Capability |
|---|---|
| Authorization servers | Issue tokens with tightly defined scopes, so agents get only the API permissions required for a specific task |
| Secrets | Stay vaulted and are issued on demand, not embedded in code, reducing secret sprawl and lowering your attack surface |
| Service accounts | Managed through a governed system instead of being shared or unmanaged, giving control over how agents use privileged machine identities |
| Applications | Connect through managed consent flows backed by Okta's Secure Token Storage, making it easier to approve access, securely handle tokens, and understand which applications an agent is authorized to use |
| MCP servers | Treated as governed resources, so agent access to the tools and services exposed through Model Context Protocol (MCP) is consistently secured and monitored |
What can they do?
Govern AI agents across their entire lifecycle
Once access is in place, you need to review it, revoke it, and account for every action an agent takes. Okta for AI Agents enables automated access reviews, structured approval workflows, and a kill switch your security operations center (SOC) can trust.
Fig 3: User access requests for AI agents
- Request access to AI agents: Users request agent access from their dashboard. Admins approve, automate, and enforce time-bound permissions.
- Certify access to AI agents: Bring agents into the same certification workflows you use for other enterprise resources. Owners, managers, and security teams can review and revoke with full auditability, ensuring agents retain only the permissions they need over time and that every decision is traceable.
- Deactivate rogue agents: When an AI agent goes rogue, agent deactivation provides an instant kill switch, a single audit trail, and containment across every system before it can lead to a larger security incident.
- Capture audit logs and telemetry: Every tool call, access attempt, and authorization decision is recorded. Stream telemetry to your security information and event management (SIEM) tool to monitor behavior, support audits, and accelerate incident response.
Why Okta for AI Agents
- Vendor neutrality: Your agents connect to any resource, such as SaaS apps, APIs, MCP servers, and other agents, regardless of which cloud, platform, or framework they run on. While cloud-native tools only secure their own ecosystem, Okta secures agents running on all of them.
- Full lifecycle, not a feature add-on: Discover, onboard, protect, and govern your agents. Most solutions solve one problem. Okta handles the entire lifecycle, from the shadow agents you didn't know existed to the kill switch that shuts them down immediately.
- Works with the IdP you already have: If your employees already sign in through another identity provider (IdP), keep using it. Okta federates with every major IdP, so your existing setup stays intact.
The largest enterprises are already making this shift.
"Adherence to standards-based management is critical for securing our agentic enterprise, right down to user lifecycle and access controls. Okta adds a critical identity layer for AI agents to help us innovate with speed and confidence."
— Bryan Meister, Senior Principal Architect, Yahoo
What’s coming next
In the months ahead, we're extending Okta for AI Agents with:
- Agent-to-Agent Connections: Trusted multi-agent workflows with governed identity handoffs
- Agent Gateway: An Okta-hosted control plane for agent-to-tool traffic, extending governance through a fully managed service
- Threat detection for agents: Identify malicious agent activity through behavioral analysis
- Human-in-the-loop controls: Approval gates for high-stakes agent actions
Explore the latest Okta for AI Agents product launches
Ready to bring your AI agents under governance?
The organizations that lead in AI won't be the ones that deploy the most agents. They'll be the ones that govern them. Okta for AI Agents enables organizations to secure and govern AI agents across their entire lifecycle and enterprise ecosystem, with centralized visibility, policy-driven controls, and auditability across applications and environments.
- Already on Okta? Talk to your Okta team to expand your identity fabric to agents.
- Using another IdP? See how Okta becomes your agent IdP without touching your existing stack.
Frequently asked questions
AI agent identity security is the practice of treating AI agents as identity-bearing entities that require the same governance, access controls, and lifecycle management as human users. It ensures that autonomous systems can be discovered, authenticated, authorized, and audited across enterprise environments.
Okta for AI Agents registers AI agents in Universal Directory as first-class identities, enabling organizations to manage their access through scoped tokens, enforce least-privilege policies, run access certifications, and deactivate rogue agents instantly. It integrates with existing identity infrastructure and major agent platforms.
Okta for AI Agents integrates with agent builder platforms such as Salesforce Agentforce, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, ServiceNow AI Platform, with several more integrations coming soon.
