TLDR: At its Oktane 2025 conference, Okta announced significant platform enhancements, including new on-premise capabilities and an ‘Identity Security Fabric’ to unify protection for human and non-human identities. A major focus was the introduction of ‘Okta for AI Agents,’ a suite of tools designed to secure AI-driven environments, addressing the critical gap in governance strategies as 91% of organizations deploy AI agents without clear management roadmaps. The company also highlighted ‘Cross App Access’ and future ‘Verifiable Digital Credentials’ to combat fraud.
Las Vegas – Okta, a leading identity and access management provider, has rolled out a series of substantial platform enhancements and strategic initiatives at its annual Oktane 2025 conference. The announcements, detailed by top executives, underscore the company’s commitment to fortifying identity security across evolving enterprise landscapes, particularly with the proliferation of artificial intelligence.
Key updates to the Okta Platform include expanded on-premises access, enabling organizations to extend Okta’s robust enterprise features to their local infrastructure. This move is complemented by enhancements such as ‘Cross App Access’ and ‘Secure Identity Integrations,’ designed to streamline and secure interactions across various applications and systems. Furthermore, many of Okta’s core enterprise functionalities are now being extended to its customer-facing offering, Okta Customer Identity, aiming for a unified security posture.
A central theme of Oktane 2025 was the imperative of securing AI agents. Kristen Swanson, Okta’s Senior Vice President of Product Design and Research, highlighted the urgent need for robust identity management in AI-driven environments. Swanson noted that AI agents are ‘unpredictable, non-deterministic, connected to all of your tools and data, and being deployed faster than we can secure them.’ She revealed concerning statistics from Okta’s ‘AI at Work report,’ stating that ‘almost every organization rolling out AI agents stated that they don’t have a strategy or a roadmap for managing them.’ This comes as 91% of organizations are already deploying AI agents, yet only 10% possess clear governance strategies.
In response to this challenge, Okta introduced ‘Okta for AI Agents,’ a comprehensive offering designed to classify and govern AI identities throughout their lifecycle. This new suite integrates risk detection, enforces least-privilege access, and leverages open standards like Cross App Access to simplify secure integrations. Swanson emphasized Okta’s unique position to tackle this, stating, ‘We’ve secured non-human identities for years. You know, those rogue service accounts and static credentials. And we’ve secured those unpredictable, non-deterministic identities for years, too: Humans. With the arrival of AI agents, we need to combine these two capabilities.’ Todd McKinnon, CEO and co-founder of Okta, reiterated this sentiment, asserting, ‘To get AI right, you have to get Identity right.’
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Looking ahead, Okta is also addressing fraud risks with the planned introduction of ‘Verifiable Digital Credentials,’ slated for fiscal year 2027. These credentials aim to counter deepfake-driven impersonation and streamline digital identity verification, further strengthening identity protection in the AI era. The company’s strategy is to create an ‘identity security fabric’ that unifies protections for both human and non-human identities, positioning identity as the new control plane for AI-driven, zero-trust enterprise infrastructure.
