Okta's Trading Volume Drops 40.91% to $303 Million, Ranked 275th as it Launches Cross App Access Protocol for AI Security

On June 23, 2025, Okta's trading volume reached $303 million, marking a 40.91% decrease from the previous day. This placed Okta at the 275th position in terms of trading volume for the day. Okta's stock price fell by 0.80%.

Okta has introduced Cross App Access, a new protocol that extends OAuth, aimed at securing AI agents and app-to-app interactions. This initiative is part of Okta's broader strategy to enhance security in an AI-powered world, where AI agents increasingly interact with enterprise systems and applications. The protocol provides IT teams with oversight and control over these interactions, allowing them to manage which applications are connecting and the types of information AI agents can access.

Cross App Access addresses the challenges posed by the increasing adoption of AI-powered tools, which often use communication protocols like Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent (A2A) to connect learning models to organizational data and applications. Currently, these connections often require manual consents and login approvals, leading to inconsistent access management and potential security vulnerabilities. Okta's new protocol aims to centralize and streamline this process, providing a more secure and efficient way to manage AI agent interactions.

Arnab Bose, Chief Product Officer at Okta, highlighted the technological and security challenges organizations face as they adopt AI agents at scale. He emphasized the importance of collaboration across the software industry to provide secure, standardized access to all applications. Cross App Access is designed to become available as a feature for select Okta Platform customers in the third quarter, enabling software vendors to facilitate secure integration between AI tools and other business applications.

With Cross App Access, the workflow for AI tools seeking access to internal applications changes significantly. Instead of requiring end users to sign in and approve each integration individually, the AI tool submits an access request to Okta. Okta then evaluates the request based on company policies and issues a token if authorized. This token is presented to the communication app for validation, completing the process without further user interaction and logging all interactions for visibility to enterprise IT.

For independent software vendors (ISVs), Cross App Access addresses the complexities associated with current identity and access flows, reducing risks such as token sprawl and inconsistent user authorizations. By shifting access management and control responsibility to centralised identity providers, Okta aims to help ISVs meet customer compliance requirements and reduce security risks. This protocol is particularly relevant as AI agents increasingly initiate connections across disparate systems autonomously.

Many organizations currently implement AI integrations through patchwork processes that use long-lived tokens and fragmented control systems, which are inherently risky and often stall further AI adoption. Cross App Access aims to address these issues by allowing IT administrators to manage agent access centrally, providing both security improvements and more streamlined user experiences. Companies can then integrate new AI applications with existing business systems while meeting requirements for oversight, compliance, and governance.