Worried about agent security? Okta's president of Auth0 has advice

Agentic AI is getting the C-Suite to wake up to the importance of identity and access management. 

That's according to Okta’s president of Auth0, Shiven Ramji, who told The Stack, “we're starting to see many of our customers saying, ‘Oh my God, I now know why identity is so critical, because to get AI security right, you really have to get identity security right.’”

IAM companies are booming, with IT leaders seeking better observability and security as agentic AI moves from experimentation to deployment. (A January 2026 Mordor Intelligence report said the IAM Security Services market reached $21.4 billion in 2026 and predicted it could grow to $36.2 billion by 2031.) 

Ramji said educating customers is one of the biggest challenges facing the leading identity and access management company. He said the rapid innovation in AI makes it difficult to pin down what reference architectures or patterns are being used and then quickly develop blueprints for them. 

He shared the four key problem areas he sees facing agentic security, and advice for executives on building secure-by-design agents.