Result

Delegated access with Cross App Access

Key path: 1a, 2a, 3b

In short: if your agents mainly need to reach SaaS apps as the signed-in user, use Cross App Access. Okta Agent SSO implements it and is included in core Okta SSO. The agent gets a short-lived grant from Okta instead of holding a stored token for each app.

Identification

Agents act for Okta users and need to read or write in SaaS apps with that user's rights. You replace stored per-app tokens with Okta-brokered Cross App Access grants.

Field marks: what does this look like in practice?

• Each agent asks users to click through a separate OAuth consent for every app.
• Refresh tokens for SaaS apps sit in agent config or a vector store.
• Admins cannot see which agents have access to which apps.
• The apps involved already trust Okta for sign-in.

What should I require from a product?

1. The agent obtains app access through the identity provider, not a stored token.
2. Grants are short-lived and scoped to the user and the app.
3. Admins can see and revoke agent access per app centrally.
4. Access uses Cross App Access or ID-JAG, now the MCP Enterprise-Managed Authorization extension.
5. The agent cannot exceed the user's own permissions in the app.
6. Revoking the user in Okta removes the agent's access too.

Which products fit?

Listed by fit to the requirements above, using each vendor's public material. This is not a ranking.

What is this result confused with?

• Per-action approval alongside Okta: Choose that one when the harder problem is approving risky actions, not getting access.
• Gateway per call for MCP: That result fits mixed identity providers and MCP tool traffic.

What does your identity provider already cover?

• Okta Agent SSO, built on Cross App Access, is GA and included in core Okta SSO. Okta Agent SSO press release, read 2026-11-03
• XAA became the MCP Enterprise-Managed Authorization extension adopted by Anthropic, Microsoft and Okta. MCP Enterprise-Managed Authorization, read 2026-11-03