Two years ago, an artificial intelligence agent could not log into your company’s Slack. Now more than two dozen software makers are building the doors for that to happen — but they are also installing the locks. Okta Inc. announced Tuesday that 25-plus technology companies have signed onto its Cross App Access framework.
The framework routes every connection an AI agent makes to enterprise applications through a company’s existing identity controls. The list of early adopters runs from Asana Inc. and Atlassian Corp. to Cloudflare Inc., Datadog Inc., Salesforce Inc.’s Slack, Zoom Communications Inc., and Anthropic PBC’s Claude.
This is not a product launch. It is an ecosystem forming. Okta first introduced Cross App Access — XAA for short — in June 2025.
The idea was straightforward: govern agent-to-app and app-to-app connections the same way a company governs human logins. Most agent connections today still depend on static API keys, which are essentially permanent passwords sitting in code.
They do not expire. They do not check who is using them. They do not audit well.
XAA is built as an extension of OAuth, the industry-standard protocol that lets applications grant limited access to user data without exposing passwords. That matters because OAuth is already everywhere. Developers know it.
Security teams trust it. Okta took that existing infrastructure and extended it to cover machine-to-machine traffic.
The framework now serves as an official authorization extension for the Model Context Protocol, or MCP. That protocol is the standard that connects AI models to outside data and tools. Think of MCP as the pipe.
XAA is the valve on that pipe — and the logging system that records everything that passes through. The problem XAA solves grew alongside agent adoption.
Early AI agents were demos. They answered questions from a static knowledge base. The new generation of agents acts.
They create records. They update tickets. They send messages.
They pull data from one system and push it into another. Every one of those actions is a security boundary crossing.
The partner list reflects that reality. Canva Pty Ltd, Docker Inc., Figma Inc., Linear Orbit Inc., and Supabase Inc. are all on board. So are developer tools like Anysphere Inc.’s Cursor and Microsoft Corp.’s Visual Studio Code.
These are not peripheral applications. These are the tools where employees start their workday, the databases that hold corporate data, and the infrastructure that routes agent traffic.
A single agent might start in Cursor, pull customer records from Supabase, generate a design in Figma, and post an update in Slack. Without XAA, each of those connections is a separate security hole. With it, every hop goes through the same identity gate.
This is where the security industry has been heading for years. The idea that a human is the only entity that needs a verified identity is dead. Machines act.
Machines have permissions. Machines need to be logged off when they misbehave.
Okta’s announcement is a signal that the market agrees. Twenty-five companies signed on early. That is not a pilot program.
That is a critical mass of vendors deciding that static API keys are no longer acceptable for agent traffic. The integrations span every layer of enterprise software.
Work tools. Data stores. Developer infrastructure.
AI model providers. The breadth of the partner list suggests that this is not a niche concern. It is a baseline requirement for the next phase of enterprise AI deployment.
Companies that run agents without this kind of access control are running blind. They cannot tell which agent accessed which record.
They cannot revoke access when an agent goes rogue. They cannot prove compliance. Okta’s play is to make that kind of blind operation unacceptable — and to give every major software vendor the tools to close the gap.
Sources
- Cross App Access: A Protocol for AI and App Security | Okta
- Okta expands Cross App Access ecosystem to secure AI agent…
