Okta Oktane 2026 | Ric Smith, Okta

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Ric Smith

President of Products and Technology

Okta

play_circle_outline Customer-Driven Product Roadmap, Okta’s Runtime AI Enforcement, Permiso Acquisition Enhances Cybersecurity

play_circle_outline Blueprint Alliance: Identity-Centric Zero Trust Framework for Enterprise AI Security

play_circle_outline Okta Agent Gateway: Intent-Based Authorization for AI Agents, Frontend Capture and Backend Action Control

play_circle_outline Internal dogfooding and 'patient zero' testing before market release

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Ric Smith, Okta

Ric Smith

President of Products and Technology Okta

In this interview from Oktane 2026, Ric Smith, president of products and technology at Okta, joins theCUBE's Rebecca Knight and theCUBE Research's Krista Case to discuss how Okta is extending identity security to AI agents as they become active participants in enterprise workflows. Smith details the company's shift from pure access and authentication toward runtime enforcement, pointing to the newly announced Agent Gateway as a pivotal move that lets Okta make real-time authorization decisions and detect threats, a capability reinforced by its recent Permiso ... Read more

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Does the Agent Gateway announcement mean Okta is moving into a runtime enforcement layer of the AI governance stack, and if so, what does that imply for its product roadmap? add

Which came first — the Blueprint Alliance or Okta’s product roadmap — and did the Blueprint shape Okta’s roadmap or did Okta’s roadmap shape the Blueprint? How would you describe that relationship? add

How is Okta for AI Agents expected to evolve, and how will Okta and application partners combine signals to capture an AI agent’s intent and make access/authorization decisions? add

Does your organization test and use its own tools internally (i.e., "dogfood" them) before releasing them to customers? add

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon, everyone. Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Okta Oktane here at Caesars Forum 2026. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside Krista Case, who is the principal analyst at theCUBE Research. So many product announcements at this conference.

Krista Case

>> Yes, it's blowing us away, Rebecca. And I think if I personally had to take a step back and summarize, one of my takeaways is that Okta is really moving beyond just the access and authentication. They're actually leaning into runtime enforcement, which is a big evolution for the company, and really looking forward to talking more about that with our next

Rebecca Knight

>> guest.With our next guest. With that, I would like to welcome to the show Ric Smith, President of Products and Technology here at Okta. Welcome,

Ric Smith

>> Ric.Hey, thank you for having me. Wonderful to be here again on theCUBE. Indeed. Really appreciate

Krista Case

>> it.Welcome back. I should have said. Yes, welcome

Rebecca Knight

>> back.A Cube veteran. So let's talk about your job, your role today in terms of how much you are actually building for what customers are telling you they need today, solving the problems customers are having today versus what you see as their problems that they're going to be having in the future, even if they don't necessarily know what those problems are, but you're seeing ahead to the roadmap.

Ric Smith

>> Yeah, happy to explain that. We operate in a very unique fashion at Okta, so we're very forward with our customers. you will see our engineers working directly with customers. In our view, we try to make the bets on the near-term solutions to solve the problems our customers are looking at over the next 12 months, and we're always trying to push ahead to look, down the road in terms of the opportunities that sit, beyond the horizon. When we talk about AI, it's a very, very volatile and evolving world, and so, what we know today will shift in terms of the strategies that we have to deploy in the future. But, day in and day out, when we talk about products like Okta for AI, which we'll get into, all of that is based on customer demand, what customers need to actually be able to safely deploy AI and realize the investments that they're making there.

Krista Case

>> Yeah. And kind of on that note, Ric, so I was mentioning, a couple of minutes ago, I look especially at kind of the Agent Gateway announcement as an interesting indication that, you guys are moving into kind of this runtime enforcement layer, which is an interesting position for Okta to be in in that AI governance stack. So can you talk to— am I reading that correctly? And if so, what does that mean to you in terms of the product roadmap?

Ric Smith

>> No, you nailed it on the head. that is a very different transition for Okta. So dominantly we had not been inline. And so with us moving in that direction, it means that we can do a lot more decision-making in terms of what we authorize. It also means that we can start venturing down the path of detections, which is like why you saw the acquisition of Permiso. And so you'll see us raise our stature as a cybersecurity firm as a result of that new footprint within the AI space.

Rebecca Knight

>> The Blueprint Alliance is getting a lot of buzz today. It was announced yesterday. Obviously, I'm interested in which came first. Did it shape Okta's product roadmap or did the Blueprint Or did Okta's roadmap shape the blueprint? How do you describe that? How do you think about that?

Ric Smith

>> I think what really happened there is that when we would sit down with customers, they would be presented with a deluge of options. And I think in the industry right now, people forget the brass tacks of how we secure the enterprise and how we look at, basics in terms of things like zero trust and how the identity sits as one of the primary perimeters for really instituting that. And, you know, with all the mousetraps that have been presented to our customers, we're like, look, we can't even have the right conversation about what we're trying to help you with unless we have this broader conversation. And so that was really the inspiration for doing it. So holistically, it's a structured way for customers to help navigate all the solutioning and buying that they have to do in order to be able to secure their enterprise around AI.

Krista Case

>> And so, Ric, in that context, do you see Okta as kind of being one source of— one point of enforcement in the AI governance stack, or will Okta sit as part of kind of a broader framework when it comes to enforcing these guardrails for AI?

Ric Smith

>> No, we're locking arms with all these vendors. We all play a different role in it. So it's obviously when you look at the integrations that happen around identity, yes, they're— we're tightly coupled as a core part of the industry. But the reality is, everybody has a clear placement there, whether you're talking CrowdStrike, Zscaler, etc.

Krista Case

>> Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okta for AI Agents, you mentioned it in the beginning of this conversation. Where is it headed next, would you say?

Ric Smith

>> So, today it's really an instantiation of our portion of the blueprint. Right. And I think the attraction to customers there is that it comes from familiar territory. Yes, it's securing something new and novel, but the reality is, the premises that we put in place for Zero Trust, very much apply to how our customers use Okta for AI Agents. In terms of forward-looking, intent-based authorization is a path we're going down. Obviously not one of the primary announcements that we have here. We're trying to stay very focused in terms of what's available to customers in the near term. But next year you will see us delivering on that, which means that we will be making decisions around access based on the context of the agents. That means understanding conversation and understanding semantically what it has available to it through the toolkits that it's permissioned for.

Krista Case

>> And so, Ric, I'd love to unpack that a little bit because, naturally when we think about understanding the full context of the agent's intent, part of that insight is going to live within Okta. Part of it is going to live, at the application layer. We had one of your partners, ServiceNow, here at theCUBE earlier this morning. So from a product and an integration standpoint, how do you think about pulling together all those different pieces of information to create that, true context in terms of the agent's intent?

Ric Smith

>> Yeah, so this goes back to the gateway conversation. So you really have to sit in two positions around these models. So one is on the front end of it so that you can capture the conversation being presented. And when you're in that footprint, then you really don't have to like worry too much about what's upstream because you're actually capturing all of that and being able to understand the semantics around it. And then based on the Agent Gateway that we've already announced, we already sit on the back end of the model where we can capture all of the actions that the model ultimately wants to take and then also make decisions around that. When you tie the two together, you get a decision engine and I'm simplifying slightly because there's a lot of mechanics underneath that, that can actually start understanding should this action happen or not based on the assembly of that conversation and what it has access to and the risks around what it actually has access to.

Krista Case

>> I was just going to say, and when you think about then taking that context and going the next step in terms of applying this kind of access that is scoped according to the specific task. How do you think about understanding and defining that task specifically enough to turn that into an enforceable policy and then prevent the agent from potentially drifting and creating risk that wasn't intended?

Ric Smith

>> It's a hard problem for us to solve, and so that's why we're hard at work doing all the research around it. But we think that that is pay dirt in terms of what actually has to happen with the agent workforce.

Krista Case

>> Right.

Rebecca Knight

>> I mean, we're reading about it every day and new incidents all the time. So as everyone knows, Okta is a very customer-centric company. And you said yourself, you're always trying to understand the challenges that they're facing, their wants and needs. Has a customer conversation ever changed your product roadmap?

Ric Smith

>> Every day.

Krista Case

>> Every day.

Ric Smith

>> Yeah. I think that as a product organization, we have clear intentions about what we need to do in the market, but how it gets stacked and prioritized and reordered in the roadmap, honestly, it comes down to customer demand and what they need. And then obviously sometimes we get it wrong in terms of our opinion about how something should be doneand the best way to challenge that is work with a customer, solve their problems, then it becomes really clear of like, is this going to be successful or not as a product?

Rebecca Knight

>> We had Jenna Cline on here earlier who was talking about being patient zero and making sure that Okta is testing all of its tools on itself too. Is that something that you do in your organization as well?

Ric Smith

>> Oh yeah. Jenna is a strong partner for us. So yes, she's at the tip of the spear and making sure that we're actually doing the right things. And we're always grateful for her work. Or the work of her team. But yeah, we dogfood everything internally. And so, I think that's always a challenge, particularly for an IT organization when you have such core infrastructure and you've gotta be at the tip of the spear of adopting these newly developed products. But they're not that far removed from what our customers get through our early access releases. So we get a lot of signal both from Jenna's team and from our customer base before a product ever reaches market.

Krista Case

>> And Ric, one of the more interesting new pieces I think coming out of your team is the Agent-to-Agent Connections announcement. I had the opportunity to sit down with your product team yesterday and talk a little bit about that and how it creates this auditable handoff chain as one agent is potentially calling or triggering a downstream action by another agent. So from your perspective, how did you think about developing this to enable customers to make sure that the authority of that downstream agent doesn't then expand or drift as the work moves through that chain?

Ric Smith

>> most of that comes down to making sure that the IDP is always central to those decisions. I think the more fascinating aspect of it is that it's the central record or system of record for every action an agent takes and the claims they're on. So what is it operating on behalf of, whether we're talking about it operating on behalf of a human or an agent operating on behalf of another agent. And that kind of attestation within the enterprise, it's very unique proposition for us and obviously presents a lot of other opportunities that we can wander down in the future if we so decide.

Krista Case

>> Yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> How do you think about your role in terms of advising the rest of the executive leadership team, because you are at the tip of the spear in terms of products and technology. And I'm imagining that you're more of a strategic advisor partner role. How is your job, particularly as someone who's a veteran of this industry and you've worked at some of the best companies in Silicon Valley, how do you think about how your role and your job is

Ric Smith

>> changing?Internally with Okta, for me, my first belief system is be a strong partner. So I'm always willing to jump in with my compatriots and try to problem solve and troubleshoot where I can be helpful. I think that it is an interesting pivot in the industry in terms of a lot of what we've viewed as business processes are becoming engineering challenges. And so, we'll see where that takes us, but we are leaning towards a more technical world and more technically capable organizations.

Krista Case

>> Can you expand on that a little bit? So I guess are you referring to having to really understand how enterprises are thinking about using AI, what their objectives are at the end of the day and how that's then translated into not only the application but then the guardrails itself? Is that what you're referring to or—

Ric Smith

>> Effectively. So let's take an accounting team, right? Not typically a team that's got engineers on staff, right? But yet they have to figure out how is data organized in my organization?

Krista Case

>> Yeah.

Ric Smith

>> How do I automate my processes? And then, a lot of them are very capable in that category, but now I actually want to put Claude in the middle of this and figure out how I can build agents around it. That starts to stretch into a new category and a new muscle for a lot of functions. And when I see it with customers that I work with, that's actually the first challenge that they're trying to sort out. And they generally take a lot of advisement from the CIO group or maybe they have a head of AI that's helping them down that path. And then ultimately, that bridges the gap to security. And then usually that's when we come into the conversation.

Rebecca Knight

>> But what you're talking about now is with the changes of work processes and workflows and digital coworkers. This is really transformation. It's the tech. As you said, the world is getting more technical. People need to be more technically inclined and adept. But at the same time, it's also about changing your mindset, behaviors, your habits. How much of your role is actually doing that kind of leadership work, the leadership stuff?

Ric Smith

>> Yeah, every day. Every day. anytime you're working with a product development organization, and we're talking soup to nuts, whether it's the technical program managers, whether it's the product managers, the engineers, et cetera, you're first going to go over a learning curve where there's friction to the adoption of a new technology. And we've never seen anything like we see today. First you deal with the skepticism, right? And then as you get people to acclimate towards it, they start to understand the realities And then once they understand those realities, you get to the art of the possible and get to more interesting things like, well, maybe the agent can actually write the code and you can just be suggestive to it, right? And so every organization goes through that process and some are quicker than others, but yeah, that's a conversation we have every day.

Rebecca Knight

>> Change management.

Krista Case

>> Yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, absolutely.

Krista Case

>> So Ric, we've been talking over the last couple minutes regarding kind of internally to Okta, I'm also curious, as you've been working with your partners on the Blueprint Alliance, to change gears a little bit, this is effectively Okta working with partners to create kind of a common control loop. Um, I've been asking a couple of guests today because I'm really interested in unpacking if there are potential policy conflicts between what Okta is bringing to the table and some of your partners. How is that rationalized, as part of the Blueprint, Alliance?

Ric Smith

>> Well, so the Blueprint Alliance essentially crafted, I'll call it like a first draft of a white paper, right? Because it's going to evolve over time in terms of the decisions that have to be made to ultimately allow these cross-boundary operations to happen. So, yes, we will have to have concessions in terms of how policies are managed between Okta and Zscaler. We'll have to have shared signals that we're already seeing in terms of market-to-market or product-to-product integrations, which is with CrowdStrike. And so on the CrowdStrike lens, we just recently integrated our ISPM offering with their endpoint offering so that we can do more agent discovery on endpoints. But it'll be those kinds of collaborations that we have to work through.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, Ric, thank you so much for coming on the show, for returning to the show. A really great conversation.

Ric Smith

>> Well, always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. I hope you have a good show.

Rebecca Knight

>> Thank you.

Krista Case

>> Thank you so much, Ric.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for theCUBE. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's coverage of Okta Oktane. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.