Okta brands itself as the world’s #1 identity SaaS platform, and it’s a great identity provider (IdP) for authentication purposes. They provide:
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
Advanced Server Access
and more in the identity-awareness space.
Their cloud-based platform provides a centralized authentication method for companies to manage and secure user authentication into applications, website web services, and devices.
Okta’s identity management, while impressive, covers only the authentication aspect of a full zero trust architecture. Okta is best used with Pomerium to provide authorization per request, the other main component of what makes for good zero trust architecture.
User identification — Okta’s platform provides strong identity-aware centralized access to upstream services.
Identity verified for all users — A good SSO and MFA enforce point.
Oh, we know them! — SSO identity provider for authenticating access to your internal services and applications.
One IdP for modern apps — This one IdP authenticates users, giving them an access token to traverse your internal ecosystem.
One standard to rule them all — Okta has a strong influence on the open standards related to authentication.
No proxy, no protection — Okta’s not being a proxy means the applications it oversees access to are exposed to direct connections from any source, increasing unintended attack surface area for the applications you want to protect.
A plague upon thee — Okta’s software must be set up on every server the platform manages access to. Setup is complex and each cluster must be maintained. Also, Okta’s client is CLI-only which may stress non-developer users.
The birds have been at the breadcrumbs — Audit logs only cover SSH and does not cover auditing for RDP.
No baggage please — Okta does not support your legacy applications that are not built to support modern SSO tech. Only Pomerium secures all legacy applications.
Mileage efficiency decreases at scale — Okta’s pricing is based per server, and this increases the costs for organizations with high usage.
Embrace Seamless Resource Access, Robust Zero Trust Integration, and Streamlined Compliance with Our App.
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