OKTA will partner with ISV to establish a new open protocol that securely manages how AI agents interact between systems
Okta, Inc, a major independent identity partner, today announced Cross App Access, a new protocol for protecting AI agents. As an extension to OAuth, it brings visibility and control to both agent-driven and app-and-app interactions, allowing IT teams to determine which apps are connected and what information AI agents can access.
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Why is it important:
- More AI tools use protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) to connect AI learning models to relevant data and apps within the enterprise. However, for a connection between an agent, such as Google Drive or Slack, and an app, users must manually log in and agree to grant agent access to each integration.
- The connection between these apps and apps occurs without monitoring, and IT and security teams must rely on manual and inconsistent processes to gain visibility. This creates a large blind spot in enterprise security and expands increasingly unmanaged boundaries.
- This challenge is amplified by the explosion of AI agents. AI agents introduce new non-deterministic access patterns, crossing system boundaries, triggering their own actions, and interacting with sensitive data.
- Security controls today are not equipped to handle autonomy, scale and unpredictability. Existing identity standards are not designed to protect the web of interconnected services and applications in enterprises. MCP improves transparency and communication between agents, but does not help manage access.
“While we are actively working with the MCP and A2A community to improve the functionality of AI agents, the increased access to data and the explosion of connectivity to apps creates new identity security challenges.” “With cross-app access, OKTA is excited to monitor and control how agents interact across the enterprise. As the protocols are as strong as the ecosystem that supports them, we are also committed to working with the software industry to provide agents with secure, standardized access to all apps.”
What we introduce – Cross App Access
Working with industry-leading ISVs, OKTA is launching cross-app access to help ISVs provide secure, enterprise-ready integration in an AI-powered world. With customers of the selected OKTA platform expected to work in the third quarter of this year, ISVS enterprise customers can provide a seamless experience for their end users by properly connecting AI tools to other apps and data, removing repeated approval consent screens, managing agent access and improving security and compliance.
For example, AI tools may need to access internal communication apps to retrieve information, or perform actions on your behalf. Without cross-app access, users must log in to AI tools via company SSO, manually authorize each integration, log in to the internal communications app, and agree to individually. This process must be repeated in other required applications, such as file storage services and project management applications. Each consent and access is invisible to enterprise customers.
With cross-app access, the AI tool will instead request access to the internal communications app from OKTA. This evaluates the request for an enterprise policy and determines whether the tool is permitted to access the internal communications app data for that particular user. If allowed, OKTA issues a token to the AI tool. This is presented to the internal communications app for verification. Once verified, the internal communications app provides access – all without additional user interaction, and under enterprise-defined security controls. Enterprises have visibility when AI tools access internal communication apps on behalf of users.
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Does this solve the ISVS challenge?
While ISVs face increasing pressure to support enterprise customers with a safe and seamless cross-up experience, their underlying identity and access flows are often inconsistent, fragmented and difficult to scale. These integrations usually rely on dangerous token exchanges and user-grown access, leading to a gap between token sprawl and visibility. This complexity and risk only increases when AI agents begin to connect autonomously between systems.
How Cross App Access Helps: Cross-app access allows ISVs to provide secure enterprise-grade integration to other autonomous systems such as AI agents and workflow automation tools. Like OKTA, ISVs can reduce security risks, simplify integration complexity, and better support the customer's compliance and governance needs.
What challenges does this solve for the company?
Integrating AI tools with existing data and systems presents important hurdles. Today, many companies rely on ad hoc methods such as long-life tokens and fragmented access control, and these integrations are inherently at risk. The adoption of AI has stagnated by this lack of visibility and controlling how agents access data between apps.
Beyond security, the user experience is affected by repeated, outdated flows of permissions when agents are unable to act seamlessly on their behalf.
How Cross App Access Helps: Cross-app access allows enterprises to manage agent access while increasing security and usability, enabling users to have a seamless, minimally compromised experience. Supports secure interoperability between apps and AI systems, making it easier to adopt innovative ISV solutions without compromising monitoring or performance.
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