The 2026 enterprise agent-identity procurement choice between Okta and specialized NHI vendors is not a binary; Okta covers three slices of the NHI surface natively (workforce and managed-service-account lifecycle, session anomaly via October 2024 ITDR, privileged human access via 2025 Okta Privileged Access expansion), is partial on two (OAuth third-party app token governance and workload identity for cloud-native runtimes), and does not cover at GA the agent-runtime credential issuance against ephemeral workloads with sub-hour lifetimes that the specialist tier (Astrix Security for OAuth-app sprawl, Apono for just-in-time cloud access, Britive for multi-cloud privileged orchestration, Aembit for workload-to-workload SPIFFE-style attestation, Andesite for NHI runtime detection on top of existing SIEM, P0 Security for temporary access management with audit-trail evidence) is purpose-built for; the architecture-grade procurement output is one comparison matrix per identity class in scope (typically three: human workforce, managed service accounts, agent-runtime), named federation seams at four specific surfaces (identity-source authority, provisioning protocol with SCIM 2.0 the default, federation protocol with OIDC or SPIFFE the choice, audit-event format aligned to the customer's SIEM), and the procurement-side contractual instruments (AM-167 NHI procurement clause work) that make the federation enforceable at the MSA layer.

Anchored on (a) Okta product documentation for ITDR (October 2024 launch) and Okta Privileged Access (2025 expansion); (b) CyberArk 2024 State of Non-Human Identity Security (45:1 median NHI-to-human ratio, 38% incident rate, 2026 projection at 80:1 for agent-heavy deployments); (c) specialist-vendor product documentation: Astrix Security (third-party OAuth-app risk + remediation), Apono (just-in-time dynamic access), Britive (multi-cloud privileged orchestration), Aembit (workload-to-workload SPIFFE attestation), Andesite (NHI runtime detection on SIEM/EDR), P0 Security (temporary access with audit-trail evidence). The slice-coverage characterisation is from vendor-product current GA documentation as of May 2026; future Okta product releases that close the partial slices (OAuth-app deep-tier or workload identity GA) would change the structural argument. 60-day review cadence (26 Jul 2026). Trigger conditions: (1) Okta announcing GA product that materially closes the OAuth-app or workload-identity gap moves toward Partial; (2) major acquisition in the specialist tier (hyperscaler acquiring one of Apono, Britive, Aembit, Andesite, P0, or Okta acquiring Astrix) redraws the comparison and likely warrants a new sibling piece; (3) OWASP NHI Top 10 or NIST CSF 2.0 publishing prescriptive Okta-vs-specialist architecture guidance influences the federation-seam framing; (4) a Storm-0558-class breach directly attributed in a 2026 vendor-issued NHI incident hardens the specialist competitive case. Sibling AM-167 covers the MSA-layer procurement clauses; AM-180 (planned) covers the TCO model for the IAM stack at 2,000-employee scale; OPS-074 covers the equivalent question at 5-15-person agency scale.