New Okta cloud tools aim to improve identity access management (IAM)

The current workforce knows no boundaries. Organizations are no longer filled with full-time employees – they have a much larger ecosystem made up of a variety of contractors and partners.

Ultimately, this means more devices, from more locations, can access corporate resources than ever before.

“In this borderless world, you not only need to secure access to these resources from outside your own network and organizational boundary, but you also need to be able to control access to them,” said Sagnik Nandy, President and CDO for Human Resources. identity at Okta.

And traditionally, companies have often invested in disjointed tools—then quickly and sadly found they were unable to keep up with modern day business.

“It requires too many custom integrations and transfers, and also results in a poor user experience, which in turn hinders user adoption,” Nandy says. “Silos and low adoption rates limit visibility and the vulnerabilities remain.”

This is the dilemma Okta wants to solve with Okta Customer Identity Cloud powered by Auth0. The company unveiled the customizable customer identity tool at its annual Octane22 conference this week.

The right access at the right level at the right time

Identity Access Management (IAM) is a framework for ensuring that the right users have the access they should (or not) have to an organization’s technology resources. And, with the average cost of a data leak At a record high of $4.35 million, demand for (IAM) tools like Okta’s continues to grow. Fortune Business Insights puts the market on track to reach $34.52 billion by 2028, up from $13.41 billion in 2021 (a CAGR of 14.5%).

With today’s announcement, Okta – which competes for market share with the likes of Oracle, IBM, SailPoint and Azure – says it takes IAM to a new level.

Okta Customer Identity Cloud addresses a wide variety of identity needs, but Nandy highlighted the many inherent risks of perpetual privileges. That is, when privileged accounts or users have permanent access to critical infrastructure and resources.

Ultimately, these create more security vulnerabilities as they extend access to users who no longer need it, causing their user credentials to target threat assets.

“We’ve seen a lot of attacks that originate from this kind of standing privilege,” Nandy says.

By integrating IGA and PAM with IAM, IT has greater power and control over access management without compromising security or user experience, he said.

Today’s technology environment is heterogeneous, so it’s critical to integrate well with everything, Nandy said. However, most providers view IGA, PAM, and IAM as distinct, rather than a unified approach. This limits which devices and operating systems they can manage as part of a single platform, rather than a platform that spans multiple operating systems, applications, devices, and user types.

“Every digital experience starts with customer identity, whether you work in the public sector or buy pizza,” said Eugenio Pace, president of customer identity at Okta. “Conventional wisdom tells us that you can make an application super secure, but very inconvenient to use. Or you can make it super convenient, but at the cost of security or privacy. This is a wrong choice.”

Instead, organizations have the opportunity to improve the experience, keep customers safe, “while app builders can focus on what matters most: innovating for their customers,” Pace said.

Nandy highlighted the fact that Okta is independent and neutral, making it compatible with thousands of applications, users, devices, operating systems and infrastructure providers. And the company continues to explore new use cases for identity business challenges.

“Given the rise of multi-cloud and the continued adoption of a broad and deep ecosystem of SaaS applications, identity solutions for privileged and non-privileged users really need to span the entire landscape of technology choice, or risk creating the kind of identity silos that result in security holes,” Nandy said.

Avoid Identity Silos

Okta’s identity technology spans staff and customer identity use cases with two purpose-built clouds: Customer Identity Cloud and Workforce Identity Cloud.

Customer Identity Cloud is the Auth0 technology that Okta acquired in 2021 and includes two use cases for consumer apps and SaaS apps.

The Workforce Identity Cloud provides a single plane of control that gives IT and security teams the ability to manage identity across all enterprise resources and users, “which is becoming increasingly challenging in a borderless world,” Nandy says.

The tool unites the “three pillars of modern identity management” in one control panel: IAM, Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) and Privileged Access Management (PAM).

It includes Okta Identity Governance, which simplifies the process of requesting and granting access to resources, enabling IT teams to ensure that only the right users have access to the specific resources. It also includes Okta Privileged Access, which secures highly privileged credentials for administrator and root accounts. And it gives administrators the necessary tools to strengthen the security of privileged resources, monitor and record privileged access, and run detailed compliance reports for auditors, Nandy said.

The tool provides an orchestration layer that leverages automation and provides visibility and control over corporate identities, Nandy said, and can pull in signals from third parties.

All things considered, Workforce Identity Cloud integrates across the entire security stack and helps IT teams manage access for all use cases, Nandy said. This can help eliminate trade-offs between user experience and security, and allow IT and staff to become “more agile and productive.”

Nandy highlighted the fact that Okta is independent and neutral, making it compatible with thousands of applications, users, devices, operating systems and infrastructure providers. And the company continues to look for new use cases for business challenges around identity, he said.

“Given the rise of multi-cloud and the continued adoption of a broad and deep ecosystem of SaaS applications, identity solutions for privileged and non-privileged users really need to span the entire landscape of technology choice, or risk creating the kind of identity silos that lead to security holes,” says Nandy.

Further Okta Features

The Okta Customer Identity Cloud for Consumer Apps helps organizations streamline registration and login across devices, stacks, or platforms. Features include social login and progressive profiling and adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA).

New capabilities to be added to consumer apps by the end of Q2 2023 include:

● Password support: App builders can enable passkeys with a switch in our dashboard, without touching their code.

● Highly regulated identity: This new toolset helps customers secure riskier transactions with added security and policy control.

● Security Center: This leverages Okta’s threat insights from billions of authentications to create a “single glass” for security teams to monitor, detect, and respond to suspicious activity in real time.

Meanwhile, the Okta Customer Identity Cloud for SaaS apps helps businesses get business ready, onboard new users, and manage authentication for enterprise customers. It features Enterprise Federation, directory synchronization, delegated administration, provisioning, custom branding, and security policies. New enhancements now generally available include:

● Okta Workforce Enterprise Connection: This makes it easier for SaaS app builders to offer out-of-the-box integrations with Okta Workforce Identity Cloud. It’s included at no extra cost with all Enterprise and B2B self-service plans.

● Organizations: Allows SaaS companies to manage and model identity for enterprise customers as organizations, and configure custom organization-based branding and policies. New support for up to two million organizations per tenant, two million members per organization, and improved search capabilities are now available.