AI cybersecurity shifts to governing agents with Okta identity
AI cybersecurity requires governing what trusted software does as well as keeping attackers out. As AI agents act across enterprise systems on behalf of users, identity must establish who or what is acting, how much authority it carries and where that authority ends. That change is pushing identity providers past traditional access control and into […] The post AI cybersecurity shifts to…
AI cybersecurity is evolving to govern what trusted software agents do, in addition to protecting against attackers. As AI agents perform actions on behalf of users across enterprise systems, identity must establish their identity, authority level, and the extent of their authority. Harish Peri, senior vice president and general manager of AI security at Okta, emphasized the importance of being able to explain and prove the series of actions an agent took in case of an issue, particularly in identifying and demonstrating the chain of custody.
Okta's blueprint for a secure agentic enterprise addresses these questions: Where are my agents, what can they do, what are they doing, and how do I respond? The risk with agents lies not in them being hacked but in misalignment leading to unintended actions by users. Okta recommends giving each agent its own identity, moving beyond simple user impersonation and avoiding overloading service accounts.
Authority needs to travel safely as agents work across applications, requiring delegation with downscoping and centralized logging to ensure the agent's scope doesn't exceed the scope of the users invoking it.
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