Okta Platform

As part of Identity and Access Management  solutions, or IAM , that many organizations use, Okta Platform  is a mature cloud-first IAM  platform that uses many single sign-on methods. This is one use case for applications, along with MFA and federation across SaaS and custom applications.

Okta Platform  helps to secure access to cloud environments, APIs, containerized workloads, and AI/GenAI services in my architecture by allowing me to create the application in Okta Platform and assign it to the right users and groups, then start configuring the authentication. The first step is multi-factor authentication, which helps secure that only the approved users and groups are allowed to use that application, whether it's an AI application or an on-premise organization application. Another important measure to avoid attackers from gaining users' credentials, such as passwords, involves single sign-on. Additionally, Okta Platform has an adaptive access policy, meaning the user, or employee in this case, does not need to remember the password. Once the administrator configures SSO , the user does not need to go through password authentication; if they are authenticated using MFA, it works directly.

The use of Okta Platform to protect non-human identities in my environment, such as service accounts, machine-to-machine access, or AI agents, is limited since in the organization I work for at Deloitte, we use Microsoft for that. Okta Platform is a great IAM  solution, but it is not an IGA solution, short for Identity Governance. The first thing an organization needs to look at is to understand their use case: do they need IAM or IGA or do they only need IAM? Because if it's only IAM, Okta Platform is good, but if they also need IGA to govern non-human identities and others, it is not a solution for that.

Okta Platform helps to address specific industry or regulatory requirements such as healthcare and financial services in my cloud environment. For instance, it benefits the banking industry and the e-commerce industry as well. However, it is available for many industries because it's a very mature and cloud-first IAM platform, making it perfect for companies or startups that are just starting out; they don't need to go through on-premise setups.

What I like about Okta Platform includes its large, pre-built application integration catalog, which is very useful. It also has strong support for the SAML standard and OpenID, commonly referred to as OIDC. Additionally, it offers good API and extensibility for custom use cases and works well in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The main benefits that Okta Platform brings to the table include strong authentication, which is the first thing, and adaptive MFA, which is very good. For example, if someone tries to log in from a country that is different from the countries they typically sign into, then Okta Platform will ask them to perform another authentication to verify that it is, in fact, the same user. Strong authentication is crucial, along with federation that I used for both cloud and on-premise systems. Federation worked very well, and it facilitates fast SaaS onboarding, with application templates in Okta Platform which make the whole configuration easier. Coming from a Microsoft background, I appreciate how Okta Platform is vendor-agnostic, meaning you do not need to depend on anything; it can work with any identity or identity governance vendor.

I noticed measurable security and operational improvements in my cloud-based workloads since implementing Okta Platform. It is very stable; we didn't have many errors when it came to users trying to log in, which is the first thing. Federation also worked, and that's one use case I can say I used it for. I had a client that was an organization with over 5,000 employees, and they wanted the authentication to go for Microsoft, but through Okta Platform. In reality, what happens is the user tries to log into an Okta Platform application and then gets redirected to Microsoft. That is federation, which refers to redirecting them to a Microsoft page. Once they complete the right authentication, they are redirected back to Okta Platform, making it a successful use case for a large organization in the insurance industry.

While there are many good things about Okta Platform, I would like to see improvements, especially in the IGA capabilities, which are limited compared to more dedicated IGA tools. I believe adding this would give them a real benefit. Additionally, it is not designed as a privileged access management solution, referred to as PAM. As I come from a Microsoft background, I see that Microsoft has both IGA and PAM capabilities, which Okta Platform lacks. Another area for improvement is pricing; it becomes complex and expensive when you add features. I would like to see licensing transparency, possibly some cost control notifications. Lastly, better policy visualization would be nice to have, showing how the policies configured can be represented more visually.

I have been working with Okta Platform for the past year.

When it comes to scalability, I find that Okta Platform's performance is very good. That's the whole point. As soon as you scale up, it often comes with additional costs, but that worked perfectly for us. We managed to implement it for a large organization with many users, so there was no problem; it was very stable.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support for Okta Platform by noting that we did need assistance once when we blocked ourselves out and had to contact Okta Platform support. It took about two days for them to respond, which I think is reasonable. However, this also depends on the support license that you have. We had the minimum one, but still, two days is acceptable as they helped us resolve the issue.

My experience with the deployment of Okta Platform is that the initial setup is straightforward for standard use cases such as fast SSO  and MFA. However, complex environments such as hybrid AD, custom applications, or lifecycle automation require careful design and skilled implementation to avoid the technical debt that's often referenced.

Regarding the pricing of Okta Platform, while it is high and complex, I find it does bring a return on investment. The important thing is for companies to evaluate the total cost and not just the base licensing because once you add more features, the total cost increases. This evaluation varies based on the organization's use case; if it's below around 100,000 users, it should be fine. However, if you plan to go beyond that, evaluating the total cost becomes crucial.

I decided to switch to Okta Platform for different use cases for different organizations, particularly at Deloitte. We noticed that many of these organizations that are very Microsoft-heavy, meaning they have many products with Microsoft, find that Microsoft Entra ID , which is an IAM and IGA solution, fits them perfectly because they are already in that Microsoft ecosystem. However, for organizations that are not heavily involved with Microsoft, then Okta Platform is a great solution because they do not need to be dependent on any vendor. It's cloud-first, and so if you need specific IAM without being tied to Microsoft, I think Okta Platform is the best alternative.

Given my experience with Okta Platform and with other technologies, my advice to other organizations considering it is to clearly define if they want IAM versus IGA requirements as early as possible. Okta Platform is not a full IGA platform, and organizations need to understand that coming in. They should also evaluate the total cost and not just the base licensing. Lastly, if they are Microsoft-heavy organizations, they might consider Microsoft Entra ID , but if they are not deeply tied to Microsoft, then definitely go with Okta Platform. I would rate my overall experience with Okta Platform as an eight out of ten.