Meet Sarah, a marketing manager at a medium-sized furniture company. Sarah remembers when she started as a marketing intern 10 years ago. She started her work days by entering her passwords multiple times, wrestling with cumbersome VPN connections, and submitting tedious access requests that could take days to fulfill. Today, her experience is radically different. She opens her laptop, logs in once, and instantly has secure access to all the applications and data she needs. 

Let’s walk through a day in Sarah's work life, seeing how a mature and comprehensive identity platform streamlines the employee experience. Then, we'll explore the broader strategic advantages these solutions deliver to the entire organization, from increased productivity to enhanced security and agility.

The challenge of piecemeal identity management

Most organizations struggle with identity management. Identity is often an overlooked aspect of cybersecurity, involving many tools acquired over time for specific initiatives. One tool for single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA), another for lifecycle management, maybe a separate one for privileged access management, and yet another for identity governance. Add in legacy identity tools and you get a fragmented, complex system that’s difficult to manage, expensive to maintain, and vulnerable to security risks.

The explosion of identities and resource types creates complexity and identity siloes

Sarah’s day: A seamless user experience

Sarah's workday begins with a single, secure OS login with passwordless MFA thanks to Okta Device Access. She immediately accesses her applications without additional logins thanks to Okta Single Sign-On. Gone are the days of password fatigue and sticky notes filled with login credentials; the passwordless future is here.

When Sarah needs to access sensitive customer data for a campaign review, Okta Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication intelligently assesses the risk of this access. Since she's connecting from a new network this morning (Mom’s home WiFi), Okta performs a quick verification via Okta FastPass. This phishing-resistant MFA is seamless and painless. In fact, Sarah doesn’t realize her corporate laptop is being recognized and verified by Okta to ensure compliance with her company’s security policies.

Later, Sarah needs access to a new marketing analytics platform. Instead of emailing or calling the help desk, she uses the Okta Identity Governance self-service access request portal. She requests the necessary permissions and the system automatically routes her request to the appropriate approver. This streamlines the process and provides a clear audit trail.

Finally, Sarah participates in a quarterly access certification self-review. Okta Identity Governance simplifies this process, presenting a clear list of her current application access and enabling her to quickly confirm or revoke permissions, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and corporate policies.

Instead of endless frustration and having to ask IT for help, she enjoys a secure experience that’s frictionless and more productive. She preps for her team call in the afternoon instead of chasing down an approval.

“Okta helps us deliver on a Zero Trust strategy by providing strong device assurance and phishing-resistant policies. This provides a critical stepping stone to achieving a 100% passwordless experience for our end users in the future.”

Eric Richard, SVP of Engineering and Chief Information Security Officer, HubSpot

The hidden costs of "free" or “included” identity capabilities

Organizations often use identity management capabilities offered by collaboration cloud providers as a "free" or low-cost option. Unfortunately, this seemingly inexpensive approach creates significant hidden costs. Implementing and managing basic identity capabilities across a complex and dynamic environment can be far more difficult and costly than originally anticipated. These costs include:

• Increased IT complexity: Using a collaboration cloud’s capabilities often means dealing with a closed system that doesn't integrate easily with other best-of-breed enterprise applications. This adds complexity for IT staff, who must spend more time on implementation, operation, and troubleshooting.
• Limited functionality: These basic solutions often lack the advanced functionality of dedicated identity solutions. This leads to gaps in security, compliance, and user experience, especially those related to evolving and new standards.
• Scalability issues: As an organization grows and its needs evolve, basic identity capabilities may not be able to scale effectively or easily. This can necessitate a costly and disruptive migration to a more robust solution.
• Higher total cost of ownership (TCO): Factoring in the costs of implementation, ongoing operation, lack of simple integration options, and potential security risks, the TCO of using a collaboration cloud's identity management is often far greater than investing in a comprehensive identity platform like Okta.

Identity system silos, rise of identity types, and tech complexity gets in the way.
 

The organizational view: Strategic benefits

Shifting perspective, let’s look at the significant strategic advantages that mature identity solutions like the Okta Platform can offer Sarah’s organization.

Sarah’s seamless user experience translates to substantial cost savings and productivity gains for her company. Employees are more productive when access is quick and easy. They’re seeing a substantial reduction in help desk tickets related to password resets, access issues, provisioning issues, and other identity-related problems.

Enhanced security and compliance are key benefits. Okta plays a crucial role in enabling a Zero Trust security framework. Zero Trust is a security model based on the principle of "never trust, always verify." This means adopting proper phishing-resistant identity verification for every user attempting to access resources, regardless of their location or which network they’re using. Okta's capabilities, like adaptive MFA, Okta Identity Governance, and Identity Threat Protection with Okta AI (ITP), lay the groundwork for this approach. By continuously assessing user and device context, Okta helps ensure that only authorized individuals (and policy-compliant devices) can access specific resources.

Advanced threat detection and identity maturity

Okta Identity Threat Protection provides real-time identity threat response. Identity Threat Protection integrates with security solutions that leverage the Shared Signals Framework (SSF) as defined by the OpenID Foundation. This framework enables the sharing of signals between different cybersecurity solutions in different layers (identity, network, etc.). This provides comprehensive and real-time mitigation of threats as they occur, reducing the impact of identity-based attacks.

By leveraging these integrations, Identity Threat Protection enhances detection and response to identity-based attacks, solidifying a Zero Trust posture. It receives signals to respond before threats reach the identity layer and sends signals to other cybersecurity solutions to craft a coordinated response to the threat. This allows organizations to evolve from traditional perimeter-based security to a dynamic, identity-centric approach.

Okta automates critical identity processes: 

• Automated onboarding and provisioning for new employees
• Seamless transfers
• Efficient offboarding and de-provisioning

This reduces manual processes, minimizing errors and mitigating risk. Valuable IT resources can focus on new projects and initiatives instead of manual processes. Okta Identity Governance includes Okta Lifecycle Management and Okta Workflows, our no-code identity automation and orchestration platform. For example, you can automatically revoke badge access when an employee is offboarded or provide access to a new facility as soon as a user’s title and location change in the HR system.

Identity maturity drives business velocity. Okta provides an Identity Security Fabric to align identity management with broader business objectives. Okta allows organizations to become proactive about identity. Okta Identity Security Posture Management identifies vulnerabilities and security gaps before they can be exploited. Okta's identity orchestration capabilities, such as Workflows and the Okta Integration Network simplify integration with other systems, creating a cohesive and agile IT shop. The benefits: Reduced risk, increased operational efficiency, and the ability to adapt quickly to evolving business needs and security threats. This drives increased business velocity.
 

An excerpt from the eBook “The Benefits of a Mature Approach to Identity Management”, commissioned by Okta and produced by Tech Target’s Enterprise Strategy Group

Transform your identity strategy

As we saw in Sarah’s case, a mature and comprehensive identity platform enhances the individual employee experience and empowers the entire organization. By providing a secure, seamless, and efficient way to manage identity, Okta enables organizations to achieve significant strategic advantages, including increased productivity, reduced costs, enhanced security, improved compliance, and greater business agility.

Is your organization ready to embrace a modern, mature approach to identity? Start by assessing your current identity strategy, identifying areas for improvement, and exploring how Okta can help you achieve your goals. Want to learn more? 

Explore the Okta Platform.

This posting does not necessarily represent Okta's position, strategies or opinion.