Kong Brings Machine Identity to APIs and AI Agents

New Kong Identity unifies API and identity management to help strengthen security and prepare enterprises for the agentic AI era

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ --Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API and AI technologies, announced today at API Summit 2025, the native availability of Kong Identity within Kong Konnect, the unified API and AI platform. This new capability brings API and identity management together to deliver secure, seamless, and scalable machine-to-machine (M2M) API access without the need of a third-party IdP provider.

As organizations adopt more autonomous and AI driven systems, a growing share of API traffic will come from digital clients such as LLMs, AI agents, and external systems acting independently. However, most enterprises today are not equipped to manage their access securely. Without consistent identity and authorization, M2M communication could become a major source of risk.

Kong Identity solves this by giving every automated client a unique, verifiable identity and enforcing precise authentication and authorization at the gateway. It brings M2M access under the same control plane as human identity, allowing teams to scale securely with a zero trust model built for the agentic AI era.

Kong Identity implements the OAuth 2.0 standard with OpenID Connect, allowing authentication and authorization to be offloaded directly to the API gateway and the new Kong Event Gateway. This approach secures automated client communication and performs the heavy lifting before a request reaches upstream services, reducing backend load, maintaining a consistent security posture, and simplifying service logic.

"Kong Identity changes how organizations manage machine identity and API security. By consolidating these critical functions, Kong Konnect empowers teams to take full control of M2M API access, ensuring every API client is authenticated and authorized with precision," said Reza Shafii, Senior Vice President of Product, Kong Inc.

With Kong Identity, users can:

• Create and manage authorization servers on a per-region basis for granular control over API access.
• Define clients, scopes, and claims through the Konnect API to represent the identity and permissions of each machine client.
• Generate dynamic JSON Web Tokens (JWT) claim values on the fly using Dynamic Claim Templates, populated with contextual data.
• Tailor every access token to the exact requirements of the requesting client, establishing a strong foundation for authorization.
• Enable developer self-service through Dynamic Client Registration (DCR) integrated directly with Konnect Developer Portal, allowing developers to automatically provision authenticated applications without manual intervention from platform teams.

Kong Identity is designed to integrate seamlessly within the broader Kong Konnect platform. It complements existing identity providers for human users while providing a dedicated, robust solution for digital clients. The native integration with Konnect Developer Portal through Dynamic Client Registration streamlines application onboarding, enabling developers to create and authenticate applications in seconds while maintaining enterprise-grade security controls. This unified approach offers a single pane of glass for managing, monitoring, and troubleshooting all API traffic and security policies.

Kong Konnect is the unified API and AI platform designed to support all aspects of modern API and AI connectivity. Enterprises can build, run, discover, and govern APIs, LLMs/MCPs, event streams, and microservices – all from a single, globally distributed control plane–enabling organizations to be ready for the Agentic AI era.

For more information about Kong Identity visit: https://developer.konghq.com/kong-identity/ .

About Kong Inc.

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API and AI technologies, is on a mission to empower companies to become "API-first" to advance and enable the AI era. They help organizations worldwide — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @Kong.

SOURCE Kong Inc.