Give every agent in your workforce an identity

Identity & Access Management was originally architected around human behavior: predictable roles, interactive authentication, and static permissions. AI agents break traditional IAM models in four fundamental ways:

• Non-deterministic behavior & machine speed: Unlike humans who follow static workflows, AI agents make autonomous, multi-step decisions and execute chained API calls at machine speed, requiring dynamic, real-time authorization rather than point-in-time logins.

• Standing credential sprawl: Traditional service accounts and API integrations rely on hardcoded, long-lived secrets or broad OAuth grants. If an agent is compromised, attackers inherit persistent, unrotated administrative access across connected systems.

• Lack of runtime context: Traditional IAM cannot evaluate what an agent is attempting to accomplish inside an individual tool call. It sees only the connection, creating severe visibility gaps around data exfiltration and prompt manipulation.

• Agent-to-agent delegation gaps: Traditional directories lack the framework to securely govern chained tasks where a primary agent delegates sub-tasks to downstream specialist agents across different SaaS applications and cloud environments.

Okta for AI Agents bridges this gap by treating non-human agents as first-class identities within Universal Directory, issuing short-lived cryptographic credentials, and placing real-time policy evaluation directly in the execution path of every tool call.

Governing unmanaged “Shadow AI” requires a dedicated identity security platform capable of multi-layer protection and full lifecycle governance. Okta provides an end-to-end solution combining agent discovery, registration, runtime controls, access governance, and remediation. 

Multi-surface shadow ai discovery: Okta continuously scans browsers, managed endpoints, and cloud environments to uncover unvetted agents and unauthorized OAuth consent grants created by employees without IT approval.

Centralized identity registry: Once discovered, agents are registered into Universal Directory alongside workforce users, assigning explicit human ownership, business purpose, and cryptographic credentials.

Identity security posture management: Okta evaluates the security posture of each agent identity, giving you visibility into users, apps, and permissions.

Runtime enforcement: Okta’s Agent Gateway provides the runtime enforcement layer that enforces identity, policy, and audit for every tool call, so you can prove compliance during an audit.

Okta mitigates critical LLM vulnerabilities—including Excessive Agency (ASI01/LLM06), Prompt Injection, and Insecure Tool Execution—by enforcing identity-driven least privilege at the prompt and runtime layers:

• Prompt-level tool scoping (mitigating excessive agency): Okta scopes the tools exposed to an agent before the model executes. By filtering out unauthorized MCP tools based on the delegating user's identity, an agent cannot access databases or APIs outside its explicit scope, reducing the attack surface and lowering schema token costs by over 90%.
  

• Runtime blast-radius containment (mitigating prompt injection): If an agent is manipulated via prompt injection, strict relationship-based authorization policies prevent the compromised agent from executing unauthorized commands or exfiltrating data.
  

• Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) guardrails: High-risk actions—such as financial transactions, bulk database exports, or permission changes—require step-up human approval before execution.

• Securing the AI pipeline: Okta secures the broader MLOps supply chain by governing access to model registries, code repositories, and development environments.

Yes. Okta for AI Agents delivers end-to-end lifecycle management for both custom-built and third-party SaaS agents, mirroring the governance rigor applied to human employees:

1. Discovery & registration: Automatically discover unknown agents across browsers and endpoints, and import custom agents into Universal Directory with verified cryptographic identities and designated human owners.

2. Scoped credentialing: Issue ephemeral, secretless tokens and dynamically vault credentials, reducing static API keys and standing administrative access.

3. Runtime access governance: Route tool calls through Okta’s Agent Gateway to evaluate context, verify user delegation, and enforce least privilege in real time.

4. Access certifications & Reviews: Schedule automated user and resource access reviews to revoke stale permissions as projects evolve.

5. Containment & decommissioning: Terminate an agent and revoke its access via a programmatic kill switch when an agent behaves unexpectedly

Yes. Okta supports AI governance in regulated environments through two offerings, with coverage that varies by compliance framework:

• FedRAMP Moderate/High and DoD Impact Level 5 environments: The Okta for AI Agents - Core SKU delivers centralized agent registration in Universal Directory, cryptographic authentication, lifecycle provisioning, and SIEM-integrated audit logging, all within a compliant government cloud boundary.

• HIPAA environments: The full Okta for AI Agents SKU is available, including Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) and Okta Privileged Access (OPA) capabilities.