Software used to do what it was told. Now it decides, acts, and connects on its own. That autonomy is rewriting what identity and access security even means.
Securing autonomous workloads requires fundamentally reimagining identity architectures.
Today, we are honored to share that Okta for AI Agents won the SiliconANGLE 2026 TechForward Award for Identity and Access Security. This year’s competition was the largest and most competitive to date, judged by an independent panel of industry analysts, journalists, and technology practitioners on technical innovation, market differentiation, and verified customer impact.
"This year's winners truly stood out among an exceptionally strong group of entries," says Dave Vellante, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media. "We want to extend a sincere thank-you to our panel of judges, whose rigorous evaluation process ensured that every awardee paired real innovation with measurable results. For technology leaders assessing where to deploy capital for maximum return, these companies warrant a closer look.”
This category win, along with our feature in the SiliconANGLE TechForward Buyer's Guide, is a powerful validation of Okta for AI Agents and our identity-first strategy for the agentic era.
Redefining identity for autonomous agents
Autonomous AI agents are already running in your environment, and not always the ones IT sanctioned. Shadow AI is spreading the same way shadow IT once did. Employees and teams are standing up agents on their own. These agents make decisions, invoke APIs, interact with external SaaS tools, and trigger downstream actions on behalf of employees. When agents operate with excessive standing privileges or unmonitored credentials, traditional perimeter-based controls fail. It's happening now, and every day without a comprehensive identity layer is another day of unmanaged, standing access accumulating across your stack.
To safely harness AI, security leaders must answer four non-negotiable questions as part of the blueprint for the secure agentic enterprise:
- Where are my agents?
- What can they do?
- What are they doing?
- How do I respond?
Okta delivers a unified control plane that brings continuous visibility, runtime authorization, automated governance workflows, and a kill switch for AI agents. By treating AI agents as first-class identities governed by least-privilege access, security teams accelerate AI adoption without increasing organizational risk.
What sets Okta for AI Agents apart
- Vendor neutrality: Okta for AI Agents connects to the tools teams use to build agents, no matter where they are built.
- Broad platform coverage: Agents connect to any resource: SaaS apps, APIs, MCP servers, and other agents. While cloud-native tools only secure their own ecosystem, Okta helps secure agents wherever they run.
- Full lifecycle management: Most solutions solve one problem. Okta discovers, onboards, protects, and governs your agent across the entire lifecycle.
- Works with the identity provider you already have: Okta works alongside your existing identity provider, adding a purpose-built agent identity layer. Nothing in your current stack changes.
Securing the next generation of AI-driven enterprises
Learn how Okta for AI Agents gives your agents a managed, first-class identity so you can discover, onboard, govern, and protect workloads across clouds, frameworks, and SaaS environments.
Download the datasheet to see how a unified control plane delivers runtime authorization, comprehensive audit trails, and kill-switch protection.
These materials are intended for general informational purposes only and are not intended to be legal, privacy, security, compliance, or business advice. You are responsible for obtaining security, privacy, compliance, or business advice from your own professional advisors. Any mention of future products, features, functionalities, or certifications in this blog is for informational purposes only. These items are not commitments to deliver and should not be relied upon to make purchasing decisions. © Okta, Inc. and/or its affiliates 2026.
