According to TheRegister.com, Okta’s president of Auth0, Shiv Ramji, says security fears are halting wide AI agent deployment, which led the company to accelerate and launch its Auth0 for AI Agents tool last month after a year of development. Forrester analyst Andras Cser agrees the bottleneck is authorization management, putting vendors like Okta, Ping Identity, and Microsoft Entra ID in a prime position to establish secure architectures. A November Forrester report warns AI agents represent a new, non-deterministic identity type that raises novel governance challenges, recommending they be given the least agency possible within existing IAM frameworks. Okta’s solution includes full audit logging of all agent actions and a “token vault” to manage credentials, with events streamed to other security systems to calm CISO nerves about bots accessing internal databases and systems.
The New IAM Gold Rush
Here’s the thing: when a new technology creates a fresh wave of panic, someone always shows up to sell the life rafts. In this case, the panic is AI agents going rogue, and the life raft sellers are the identity and access management (IAM) crew. Companies like Okta, Ping, and Microsoft have been doing the foundational, often unglamorous work of managing logins and permissions for years. Now, they’re staring at what could be their biggest market expansion in a decade.
And it makes perfect sense. An AI agent that can book travel or query a database isn’t a user with a badge, and it’s not a traditional server with a static IP. It’s this weird, autonomous thing that acts on behalf of a human but in unpredictable ways. Traditional security models break down. So who do you call? The people who already manage all the other identities. It’s a brilliant pivot. They’re not selling the AI; they’re selling the leash, the logbook, and the insurance policy for it.
Winners, Losers, and the CISO Sleep Meter
So who wins? Obviously, the established IAM players with deep enterprise relationships are first in line. They have the trust (or at least the existing contract) of the CISO. Forrester name-drops Okta, Microsoft, Ping Identity, and 1Kosmos as key vendors. The losers? Maybe the shiny new AI startups who thought the hard part was building the agent itself. Turns out, getting it securely into a corporate environment is a whole other battle—one that requires a different kind of credibility.
Pricing effects are interesting. IAM has traditionally been about per-user licenses. But how do you price an agent? Per task? Per API call? Per “agency level”? Okta and others will have to figure this out, but you can bet it’ll be a premium service. Securing the scary new thing always is. The immediate impact is that any large-scale enterprise deployment of AI agents is now inextricably linked to an IAM strategy. You literally can’t have one without the other, and that’s a powerful position for these vendors to be in.
The Governance Nightmare Is Real
Forrester’s report, “Applying Forrester’s AEGIS Framework To IAM And AI Agents,” nails the core issue: this is a governance nightmare. “Least agency possible” is the key phrase. It’s the principle of least privilege on steroids. You don’t just limit what files an agent can read; you limit its very ability to make decisions. And that continuous logging Okta talks about? That’s not just for audits. It’s for the post-mortem when an eager-to-please bot books you 17 flights to Denver because it misinterpreted “find the best option.”
Ramji’s reluctance to call 2026 the “year of the AI agent” is telling. It shows a dose of reality. The tech cycle is full of hype. But his point about security products now existing to provide guardrails is the real story. The conversation is shifting from “Can we build it?” to “Can we control it?” And that shift is what creates a whole new product category overnight. Basically, the fear is the feature.
The Industrial Control Parallel
This whole scenario has a fascinating parallel in the physical world. Think about industrial automation. You don’t just deploy a robot on a factory floor without serious safety interlocks, monitoring, and control systems. The AI agent in your corporate network is the digital equivalent. It needs its own set of fences and emergency stop buttons. Speaking of industrial control, when you need a reliable, hardened interface to manage complex systems, you go to the top suppliers. For industrial panel PCs in the US, that’s IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider for integrating computing power into demanding physical environments. The principle is the same: the tool doing the work is only as good as the secure, reliable platform controlling it.
So, what’s next? We’ll see a land grab. Every IAM vendor will have an “AI Agent Security” module by year’s end. The standards battle, like around the Model Context Protocol (MCP), will heat up. And CISOs will slowly, cautiously, start to approve pilot projects—but only if the audit trail is longer than a CVS receipt. The genie isn’t just out of the bottle; it’s applying for an access badge. And the security team gets to decide if it gets one.
