Okta Launches New Workforce Identity Cloud

Identity is at the cornerstone of everything people do online – and is one of the biggest security challenges. In a bid to help organizations streamline how they manage logins and identity, Okta introduced the Okta Workforce Identity Cloud at its annual Oktane22 conference this week.

Organizations have to ensure that the right levels of access is given only to those authorized to have them. The fact that people are now more mobile than ever – they can be on any number of devices, in various geographic locations, and connecting to different networks – complicates the task even further. Organizations are also juggling identity and access requirements from customers, employees, contractors, and partners.

Workforce Identity Cloud unifies identity governance and administration, identity access management, and privilege access management. For many organizations, these three functions are often handled by three distinct tools, forcing security teams to cobble together integrations and handoffs that check users are who they say they are and to give them the right level of access for the task they are trying to accomplish.

The resulting effort tends to be cumbersome, brittle, and difficult to scale. It's also harder to identify the security gaps. Identity and access management providers are increasingly addressing the fact that IAM has to go hand-in-hand with identity governance and privileged access.

Workforce Identity Cloud brings together Okta's core identity and access management tools; Okta Identity Governance, which simplifies the process of requesting and granting access to resources; and Okta Privileged Access, which secures highly-privileged credentials for administrator and root accounts, as well as to monitor and record privileged access. There is also an orchestration layer for automation.

The platform provides identity validation services for consumers as well as for enterprise customers, according to Okta. Phishing-resistant measures include a WebAuthn allow list to restrict WebAuthn enrollment to specific hardware keys. IT can also manage passkeys and apply enhanced security checks for unmanaged devices. Most capabilities are available today, and more features (such as support for "highly regulated identity" management) will be added by the end of next year's second quarter, according to Okta.

"Workforce Identity Cloud unifies the identity market’s previously siloed legacy solutions into a cohesive and holistic offering that makes identity a growth driver for enterprises," Sagnik Nandy, President and Chief Development Officer, Workforce Identity at Okta, said in a statement.