APIs empower every enterprise function, starting from seamless customer experiences to efficient internal operations. As a matter of fact, APIs are the foundational technology that fuels the advancements in AI, MCP, agentic, and autonomous systems. They're the critical connective tissue that allows data, intelligence, and actions to flow securely and reliably across ecosystems.
This enormously promising technology comes with its own complexities, especially when it comes to ensuring unbreachable security. Many organizations unknowingly take a fragmented approach: managing APIs with one system while securing identities with another. This siloed approach often leads to increased operational overhead, high security risks, and stalled innovation.
What if you could unify these critical functions?
What if your API platform wasn’t just responsible for connectivity and management, but a strategic enabler of security and trust by providing unified application identity?
All these wishes turn into a reality, thanks to Kong Konnect.
We’re building Kong Identity, which will offer a transformative approach by consolidating API management and application identity management into a single unified platform that delivers unparalleled control, security, and developer experience.
Consider the typical enterprise architecture in a relatively mature organization, an API management layer defines and deploys services to an API gateway, an Identity Provider (IDP) manages human user identities, and separate systems or at least separate control planes in the IDP handle machine-to-machine identity management.
For an API consumer, the lifecycle quickly becomes complex: requesting access often means generating API keys or secrets that must be provisioned and mapped to the right APIs and included in the client code; developers then need to understand different formats and mechanisms for authentication; rotating those secrets is typically a disruptive, manual process; and short-lived tokens, if used, are inconsistently implemented across platforms. Each step creates opportunities for drift between teams and systems. The result is increased operational overhead and developer friction. Over time, this complexity slows down innovation as security teams are forced into the role of bottleneck, managing identity sprawl instead of enabling velocity.
Now, here's another organization without even this level of structure, where application identity management is essentially ad hoc. API consumers are handed static API keys or embedded credentials through email, chat, or wikis, with no central issuance process or approval workflow. Keys are often shared across teams and environments, making it impossible to trace who is actually using an API. Secrets are hardcoded into configuration files or source code, sometimes pushed into public repos by accident. There's no catalog of which applications hold which credentials, no rotation schedule, and no mechanism for automated expiration. When a developer leaves or an application is retired, old keys linger indefinitely, silently increasing the attack surface. In this environment, security incidents are almost inevitable, and responding to them is chaotic because there's no reliable way to determine the scope of exposure or revoke compromised credentials without breaking critical integrations.
Both scenarios are appalling. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Kong Identity, as part of the Kong Konnect platform, fundamentally changes this narrative. By bringing API management and identity management together, Konnect empowers you to take full control of your machine-to-machine (M2M) API access, ensuring every API client is authenticated and authorized with precision.
Kong Identity implements the OAuth 2.0 standard with OpenID Connect. This allows you to offload authentication and authorization directly to your API gateway. This is crucial for securing automated client communication. Kong Konnect does the heavy lifting before a request even reaches your upstream services. This yields visible results, such as reduced backend load, a consistent security posture, and simplified service logic.
With Kong Identity, you can create and manage your own authorization servers on a per-region basis, providing granular control over who can access your APIs. You can leverage the Konnect API to define clients, scopes, and claims, all representing the identity and permissions of your machine clients. It even offers Dynamic Claim Templates to generate custom JWT claim values on the fly, templated with contextual data. This powerful combination ensures that every access token is tailored to the exact requirements of the requesting client, providing a strong foundation for authorization.
Kong Identity is designed to integrate seamlessly within the broader Kong Konnect platform. It complements your existing identity providers for human users while providing a dedicated, robust solution for your non-human clients. This unified approach means a single pane of glass for managing, monitoring, and troubleshooting all your API traffic and security policies.
Kong Identity is a new world where your machine-to-machine API access is inherently secure, where identity policies are uniformly applied, and where your development teams can innovate faster without compromising on security. By consolidating API management and application identity management in a single, powerful platform, Kong Konnect empowers you to accelerate innovation, strengthen security posture, reduce operational costs, and improve the developer experience.
Ready to take complete control of your API ecosystem? Explore how Kong Konnect can transform your API security and management strategy at API Summit.
Experience firsthand how organizations are modernizing their architecture while securing their APIs with a unified approach at API Summit 2025. Meet industry leaders, learn hands-on about the latest innovations, and take away the knowledge you need to become an API-first enterprise. We look forward to seeing you there.
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