Okta Expands Into Identity Management for AI Agents
Article excerpt
As corporate use of artificial intelligence spreads from assistance to "AI agents" that perform actual work, the market for identity and access management is growing. Just as employees are issued ID badges, AI agents now need a "digital identity" that verifies who created them and which systems they can access - opening a new growth opportunity for U.S. cybersecurity firm Okta. Okta provides single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA) and access management services. More than 20,000 companies currently use Okta, and the platform connects to more than 8,000 business software applications and cloud services. Where the company previously managed human logins and permissions, its business is now widening into controlling the entire chain of authority running from people to AI agents to corporate systems. Okta sees the core questions of AI security as which agents exist, what they can connect to, and how far they can act. As AI agents advance to reading emails, retrieving information from customer management systems and modifying code, companies must manage each agent's permissions and scope of action in real time. Okta Chief Executive Todd McKinnon said that when the company first surveyed one client, it found about 50 Claude agents, but that the number had grown to 1,500 a few weeks later, adding that agents will log in far more frequently than people do. The most...
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Dozens of contracts related to AI agents were signed, including several worth more than $1 million.
