About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges of managing AI agents and non-human identities in cybersecurity, featuring insights from Ely Kahn of Okta.

Are overprivileged AI agents the biggest emerging threat in cybersecurity? In a recent high-profile attack, a vibe-coding company had its entire source code stolen because an attacker exploited a long-lived, overprivileged token tied to a third-party AI agent. In this episode, Ashish sits down with Ely Kahn, CPO at Okta, to unpack the challenge of managing Non-Human Identities (NHI) in the AI era. Ely explains why traditional, static human permissions completely break down when applied to autonomous agents. To solve this, Okta has spearheaded Cross-App Access (XAA), an extension of OAuth that uses an Identity Assertion Grant (ID JAG). This open protocol, backed by 25+ partners, including Anthropic, XAA securely passes the baton between apps without annoying consent pop-ups or dangerous static API keys. We also explore the four maturity levels of agent authorization, ranging from broad API keys to the ultimate "North Star" of intent-based security. Learn the difference between SPIFFE (for internal cryptographic identity) and XAA (for downstream resource authorization), how the Linux Foundation is building an Agent Domain System, and why every CISO needs an immediate…

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