Okta: AI Adoption Accelerating Across APAC, but Identity Gaps Remain

Organisations across Asia Pacific are rapidly adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation, but many lack the identity controls needed to manage this shift securely, according to new data from Okta’s Businesses at Work 2026 report.

As AI adoption accelerates, non-human identities—including AI agents, bots, and service accounts—are expanding rapidly across enterprise environments and can outnumber human users by as much as 45 to 1.

Despite this, Okta found that only around 10% of organisations report having identity systems fully equipped to manage and secure these identities, highlighting a growing gap between adoption and control.

Governance and accountability are also emerging as key challenges. As AI becomes more embedded in business operations, many organisations are still early in defining ownership for AI security, increasing the risk of unmanaged or shadow AI activity.

What Okta Found Out

Key findings of the Okta study include:

• AI adoption is accelerating across APAC. Organisations are embedding AI agents into workflows, customer interactions, and core operations.
• Non-human identities are expanding rapidly. AI agents, bots, and service accounts are growing at scale across enterprise environments.
• Readiness is lagging. Only around 10% of organisations feel fully equipped to manage and secure non-human identities.
• Governance gaps remain. Many organisations lack clear ownership and accountability for AI security.
• Security priorities are shifting. Identity and access management is becoming critical as organisations scale AI.

Across APAC, organisations are balancing rapid AI adoption with an increasing focus on security and governance. As automation scales, identity and access management is becoming a critical control point, with security applications among the fastest-growing categories in many organisations’ technology stacks.

“As organisations scale AI across the enterprise, we are seeing a fundamental shift in how identity needs to operate,” said Dan Mountstephen, SVP and General Manager, APJ at Okta.

“We are seeing this play out very clearly across APAC, where organisations are moving quickly to adopt AI, but are still building the governance models needed to support it. This isn’t just about managing more users; it’s about managing entirely new classes of identity that don’t behave like humans and operate at a completely different scale.

“If you automate anything at scale, the risk scales with it. The organisations that will lead in this next phase won’t be the ones that move fastest, but the ones that can demonstrate control, accountability, and governance as they deploy AI.

“That’s why identity is becoming the control plane for the modern enterprise—it’s what enables organisations to manage access, enforce policy, and maintain trust as environments become more complex,” Mountstephen added.

The findings reinforce the growing importance of identity as the foundation for securing AI. As organisations continue to scale adoption, extending visibility, access controls, and governance across both human and non-human identities will be critical to maintaining trust and control.