Okta expands India operations to help customers secure AI at scale
Published on 12/11/2025 at 12:13 pm EST
Okta is expanding its Bengaluru campus with significant investment in R&D and facilities. For Operations leaders, this means faster delivery of identity features that secure both human users and AI agents across your stack.
The urgency is real. Okta's research shows 91% of companies already run AI agents in production, yet only 10% have a security plan for them. Analysts suggest this gap could lead to 40% of AI agent deployments failing by 2027 without strong authentication.
Why it matters for Operations
- AI agents are the new users. They need the same identity lifecycle: provisioning, authentication, authorization, monitoring, and deprovisioning.
- Identity becomes a primary control plane for AI safety at scale-especially for non-human identities, service accounts, and machine-to-machine flows.
- Budget and vendor selection should prioritize IAM capabilities that unify human and non-human identities under one policy fabric.
- India-based engineering momentum can speed roadmap delivery, localization, and support for regional requirements.
What's new
- Expanded Bengaluru facility focused on building the foundational Identity Security Fabric for AI-driven ecosystems-serving India and global customers.
- Team growth to 700 employees since 2023, with plans to increase India headcount by 50% in 2026, centered on deep-tech engineering and product development.
- Engineering teams advancing Policy Recommender, Governance Analyzer, ITP, and new capabilities to secure non-human identities.
- Expansion supports Okta's international growth strategy to scale from $5B to $10B in revenue, reinforcing India as a critical global talent hub.
- Partner-first approach in India: working closely with Sonata, Softcell, ACPL, and 22By7 to enable identity-led transformation nationwide.
Leadership perspectives
"Okta's data shows that more than half of organizations now see modern identity and access management as their most critical defense in the AI era. Securing both human and non-human identities requires a unified Identity Security Fabric. India's digital ambition is unmatched, and by deepening our presence in Bengaluru, we're uniquely positioned to help customers innovate safely as they embrace GenAI and agentic AI. Our expanded Bengaluru facility will accelerate AI-driven identity innovation for the region." - Stephanie Barnett, VP Presales and Interim GM, APJ
"Our expansion in Bengaluru is about amplifying our ability to innovate at the speed of AI. India's talent pool has the unique depth required to tackle the complex security challenges of securing AI agents and the expanded identity surface. This new facility will be the engine that helps build the identity layer of the future, ensuring that Okta leads the charge in securing the age of AI for customers across sectors." - Shakeel Khan, Regional Vice President & Country Manager, Okta India
What Operations teams should do now
- Inventory non-human identities: AI agents, service accounts, integrations, and automations. Map which systems they access and why.
- Enforce strong authentication for agents: signed JWTs, mTLS, key rotation, and secrets management with tight scope limits.
- Apply least privilege by default: policy-based access tied to tasks or workflows, not broad roles. Expire access automatically.
- Standardize policy in one place: unify human and machine policies under an identity fabric to avoid drift and hidden access paths.
- Monitor and alert: log agent actions, set behavior baselines, and alert on anomalies (e.g., data exfil patterns, unusual privileges).
- Automate join/move/leave for agents: provision, rotate, and deprovision credentials as models, tools, and workflows change.
- Embed identity checks in CI/CD: block deployments when policies, scopes, or secrets don't meet standards.
- Run tabletop exercises: simulate compromised agent credentials and validate your isolation and recovery steps.
- Vendor due diligence: ask for machine identity support, policy-as-code options, and evidence of alignment with authentication standards such as NIST SP 800-63.
NIST Digital Identity Guidelines (SP 800-63) can help set authentication baselines for human and non-human identities.
India's role in the next phase of identity
India is entering a defining moment in digital transformation. Enterprises are scaling AI, tightening security foundations, and unifying identity. Okta's Bengaluru expansion aims to support this shift with features built for AI-era operations and governance-locally and globally.
About Okta
Okta is The World's Identity Company. Its customer and workforce identity solutions help secure authentication, authorization, and more across users, employees, and partners. Learn more at okta.com.
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