Okta Introduces Cross App Access to Help Secure AI Agents in the Enterprise

Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ: OKTA), the leading independent identity partner, today announced Cross App Access, a new protocol to help secure AI agents. As an extension of OAuth, it brings visibility and control to both agent-driven and app-to-app interactions, allowing IT teams to decide what apps are connecting and what information AI agents can access.

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Cross App Access

Why it Matters:

• More AI tools are using protocols like Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) to connect their AI learning models to relevant data and apps within the enterprise. However, for connections to be established between agents and apps, such as Google Drive or Slack, users need to manually log in and consent to grant the agent access to each integration.
• These app-to-app connections occur without oversight, with IT and security teams having to rely on manual and inconsistent processes to gain visibility. This creates a big blind spot in enterprise security and expands an increasingly unmanaged perimeter.
• This challenge will be amplified with the explosion of AI agents, which are introducing new, non-deterministic access patterns, crossing system boundaries, triggering actions on their own, and interacting with sensitive data.
• Today’s security controls aren’t equipped to handle their autonomy, scale, and unpredictability. Existing identity standards are not designed for securing an interconnected web of services and applications in the enterprise – and while MCP improves transparency and communication between agents, it doesn’t help manage access.

“While we're actively working with the MCP and A2A communities to improve AI agents’ functionality, their increased access to data and the explosion of app-to-app connections will create new identity security challenges,” said Arnab Bose, Chief Product Officer, Okta Platform at Okta. “With Cross App Access, Okta is excited to bring oversight and control to how agents interact across the enterprise. Since protocols are only as powerful as the ecosystem that supports them, we're also committed to collaborating across the software industry to help provide agents with secure, standardized access to all apps.”