Okta Platform Reviews

Okta Platform serves as a single sign-on tool in our daily operations. We use Okta Platform because we have access to numerous applications, and it is impractical to add all websites to a favorites bar or remember all the passwords for these applications, tools, and websites. We have configured Okta Platform for every person, allowing them to connect to the tools and applications through single sign-on.

The best features Okta Platform offers are the ease of use and the ease of access.

The ease of use comes from the very user-friendly interface, which allows us to select the application we need to sign on to easily. The ease of access stands out because it can be accessed through one link only.

Okta Platform has positively impacted our organization because our staff can connect to all tools and applications we use from a single location, which has saved us time.

When we have a new joiner who does not know the links for our tools or applications, they spend time asking other users and may engage in lengthy conversations. Because of that, we advise the new joiner to sign in to Okta Platform, and they will find all the applications and tools they need.

Okta Platform can be improved by enhancing the mobile application because sometimes it has issues. Specifically, sometimes the OTP is not received for the mobile application.

I have used Okta Platform for approximately one and a half years.

My advice to others looking into using Okta Platform is that it saves money and effort and saves time, making it a great solution for your company. I rate this product 9 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

As an integrator, I work with Okta Platform.

Okta Platform can be used for IAM and IGA; it is a cloud-based solution for Identity and Access Management, as well as Identity Governance and Access.

As an integrator, I find Okta Platform user-friendly with a good number of connectors, making it easy to integrate with applications, and it is easy for SSO implementation and MFA implementation.

Lifecycle Management is configurable in Okta Platform; you can configure the joiners, movers, and leavers process with this product.

Okta Platform is a cloud-based platform, so you do not have to take care of installations as you would with on-premises solutions for SailPoint or Oracle Identity Management, which is a big difference.

Based on requirements, context-aware policies of Adaptive MFA are configurable, which is a plus point, as you can configure it based on certain requirements, such as adaptive authentication based on behavioral patterns and logging in from one place to another.

It is time-saving, which is definitely linked with money; a lesser number of users are required to do the manual work, so it has that impact on money as well.

I have not encountered any negative points for this product.

For log monitoring, after a certain period of time, logs are deleted, such as after three months, and you have to configure it using a separate or external SIEM connector, such as Splunk or Cortex XSOAR, because after 90 days, the logs will be deleted, so we have to take an export manually or add one external log monitoring solution.

If the organization is big, I can say Okta Platform is affordable; however, for small-scale industries, I would not recommend it, but for medium and enterprise organizations, it is good.

I have been using Okta Platform for approximately one to one and a half years.

Okta Platform is a stable product.

Okta Platform is a scalable product.

I can rate Okta Platform support at approximately eight or nine out of ten.

Positive

I have worked with Oracle Identity Management and SailPoint as other access management tools before.

I have not worked with Universal Directory in my case, and I have not worked on it recently.

Okta Platform is an IGA solution, so in terms of PAM capabilities, it is not working as PAM for storing passwords or secret vaults, such as Delinea or CyberArk; it is a completely different product.

Public Cloud

Other

We are an advertising company with around 400 employees in four different countries: Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil. We have implemented Okta Customer Identity to enforce security in our applications and ensure all users access them securely. We use Okta Customer Identity for various applications like Office 365 and several other applications essential to our business.

Okta Customer Identity focuses on providing top-notch identity management solutions. One of its most valuable features is its easy integration with various applications through its extensive application directory, offering hundreds or thousands of applications ready to configure. This integration is significantly easier compared to Microsoft Entra ID, where we encountered numerous issues. We particularly value its real-time reporting capabilities. For example, we detected cyberattacks from countries like Russia and Asia and were able to block those IP addresses and configure our system for more security. These advanced security features and reporting capabilities make it easy to manage.

Okta Customer Identity is continuously improving its solution. Since we started using it in 2019, we have observed numerous enhancements to increase security.

We have been using Okta Customer Identity for more than five years in our company.

We had an issue a couple of years ago that was swiftly resolved by the support team, showing their efficiency. They also offer a comprehensive knowledge base on their website, which is very helpful for addressing any issues or queries.

Neutral

We evaluated Microsoft Entra ID but chose Okta Customer Identity because it is easier to integrate with various applications. Microsoft Entra ID presented many challenges and it was more difficult to manage integration processes.

The initial setup of Okta Customer Identity is straightforward due to its well-architected solution. It is intuitive and user-friendly for administrators to manage.

Okta Customer Identity is expensive compared to other solutions, but we believe the investment is justified given the rising cybersecurity threats. Despite the cost, it's cheaper than the potential financial loss from a security breach.

We evaluated Microsoft Entra ID.

Overall, I would rate Okta Customer Identity a ten. Okta Customer Identity is solely focused on identity management, which makes them excel in this area.

Private Cloud

Other

We are currently using Okta Customer Identity as a managed service platform. We are building a platform where our customers can subscribe to different products of Okta Customer Identity, such as Access Manager, Entity Manager, and Okta Privileged Access. Our customers purchase subscriptions and create a PO number, which we use to perform technical implementations.

Okta Customer Identity is a SaaS-based application, making it easy to configure compared to competitors. It offers around eight thousand five hundred out-of-the-box connectors, providing an edge over other tools. It eliminates the need for configuring connectors using REST APIs as they are readily available. The Entity Manager is integrated with SSO, and Okta Customer Identity offers a wide range of protocols for federated single sign-on and token exchange. Okta Customer Identity also provides excellent documentation and training resources.

In Okta Identity Governance and Okta Privileged Access, some features are still being developed. Integration with Active Directory servers, Cisco routers, and switches is not currently available. Additionally, integration with platforms like DB2 and Oracle or SaaS-based databases is still in progress. These features need further development for full functionality.

The support from Okta Customer Identity is excellent, and I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

Okta Customer Identity is known for its easy configuration and deployment.

Okta Customer Identity is considered cheaper compared to other tools in the market, such as IBM and CyberArk products. Further details on costs would require consultation with our sales team.

I compared Okta Customer Identity with solutions like IBM Security Access Manager and CyberArk. While CyberArk is a fully functional tool with all features, Okta Customer Identity is more affordable and offers comparable functionality.

I rate Okta Customer Identity as nine out of ten. The Privileged Access Manager part is still in development but is expected to be in line with competitors like CyberArk or BeyondTrust soon.

Public Cloud

Other

It is for Single Sign-on and Multi-Factor Authentication.

It is very easy to log in to all my various corporate accounts through Okta Platform. This helps me because I do not need to have any password. I just simply log into Okta Platform which has a single sign-on capability.

This helps us whenever our employees, our new employees come into the company. On first login, when they come into the company, they have access to all our corporate accounts already once they have their corporate account. They can log into their various productivity and corporate applications. This helps ease the burden from our IT support team to have to onboard someone manually. When someone leaves the company, having an IT team have to remove their access one by one is a very difficult process. Okta Platform Lifecycle Management helps us offboard those employees who have left the company more easily.

It would be great if there were a way to save even my social media passwords and other passwords through Okta Platform and single sign-on through Okta Platform in the future. I do not think they have this capability just yet.

I have been using this for six years.

There were some alternatives like JumpCloud and Ping Identity that we were evaluating. However, since we are a partner, we prefer Okta Platform. There is a bias towards Okta Platform.

I would say the setup difficulty was in the middle, depending on circumstances. For us, it was quite simple because we had everything in place. We just needed to integrate the Single Sign-on and the directory with our Google Workspace or our current IDP. It was pretty straightforward and took a couple of days.

Regarding pricing, as mentioned, we are a partner, so we do get a special big discount as a partner versus other customers.

There were some alternatives like JumpCloud and Ping Identity that we were evaluating.

Okta Platform is a great product and one of the best. We are a partner and have been using it for six years. We have four engineers on our team. We do not use the PAM and do not need it. I would rate this product nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Other

Customers' workforce often operates within multiple scenarios and setups. For instance, some customers may use Microsoft Active Directory. For example, out of 5,000 employees, only 2,000 might be integrated into AD, while the rest could have access managed directly within specific applications by their respective owners. Users are burdened with managing multiple usernames and passwords, needing to input both separately whenever accessing an application. Moreover, there's a lack of visibility regarding which users possess privileged access, and whenever users change roles, it becomes challenging for customers to update access across various application layers due to the absence of centralised control. To address these issues, Okta Workforce Identity offers a solution. By consolidating identity and access management into a centralised repository, it streamlines access control, providing users with appropriate access levels based on their profiles. This centralised approach simplifies management for customers, enhancing security and efficiency.

Okta controls all the users. It has context-based access from the user and type of device. It identifies the risk and can do a step of authentication when that user is trying to access some sensitive application from an unknown device.

Okta offers single sign-on for those who prefer Microsoft or a single sign-on solution. They have integrated multiple applications with Azure. It still follows the old practice of creating usernames and passwords within the application for some legacy applications. We aim to address this issue by presenting an alternative. Instead of managing multiple username and password combinations. Azure can also integrate with IBM solutions. This creates a unified point of access once they adopt solutions like IBM's within their organisation.

If Okta Workforce Identity has a strong integration with other OEM solutions and can leverage intelligence from those OEMs to enable automatic restricted access for users, it would be highly appreciated. For instance, if it can integrate with DLP and EDR solutions, and if the DLP detects suspicious user activities, it should automatically restrict access to sensitive applications or prompt for multi factor authentication.

I have been using Okta Workforce Identity as an integrator.

The product is stable.

It is highly scalable. More than 2,000 users are using this solution. It is being used by some customers for their end customers, such as online e-commerce portals.

We work with all types of clients, but this particular solution is tailored for mid-scale enterprise customers. They should have at least 5,000 users and several hundred applications for this solution to be effective. The environment and the persona should be at a mature stage. In some organisations, there will be an IT manager, senior IT manager, and head of IT, who will be responsible for both infrastructure and security.

Whenever we need information, we receive the required support from Okta. So, if I need clarification regarding integration, communication, or any related matters, I can get support from the local IT team.

Positive

The initial setup requires the expertise of the professional services team.

Okta Workforce Identity is expensive due to currency differences, particularly between INR and USD.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven to eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

MFA must be implemented to access critical applications. Cost management is essential, as it's impractical to cover payments for all users across all applications. Therefore, a risk-based approach is necessary, where MFA is implemented selectively based on requirements from the same vendor or platform. This facilitates easier deployment, management, and provides a single dashboard view for identifying and managing risks effectively. It also enables the identification of the riskiest users within the organisation.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I work for one of Norway's largest employers with 50,000 employees. This is Norway's largest retail chain and we use it for 30,000 workers in retail, 15,000 in warehousing, and 5,000 in the corporate environment. For all of these, onboarding is automated to the HR and we have an old CA, which is now called the Broadcom Identity Management Solution for provisioning into Okta Workforce Identity. In this solution, we take those 50,000 identities and we've now built a B2B portal so that vendors, producers of the stuff that is sold in these retail chains, can log on and do things like plan their shipments, have the accounting done, et cetera, et cetera. So there are about maybe 20,000 people, a total of 70,000 people in this identity space. Last but not least, is the PAM solution. So we have maybe 300 IT staff on shore and we have maybe 600 offshore. I haven't done the latest count, but around 1000 IT workers authenticate through Okta Workforce Identity but are then given access to the PAM solution because the PAM solution protects both our cloud environment and our on-prem environment. We use the cloud to get into the on-prem.

First of all, the solution is very simple. It's actually made for smaller companies. So working with it, I wouldn't say that anyone could do it, but everything can be expressed as groups and rules. 

The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it.

We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve.

The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. 

To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The stability is fantastic and has never been down. I give the stability a ten out of ten.

The solution's cloud environment seems to be highly scalable. We haven't found any bottlenecks there. The only bottlenecks we found are within our own infrastructure.

The customer support guy for Okta in Europe, a relationship manager, used to be a friend of mine when I lived in Sydney, Australia. He worked for Sun Microsystems systems back then. Sun Microsystems was the best product in the IT industry. Now Okta Workforce Identity is the best in the identity industry. The solution is not perfect because it's meant to be high volume, simple functionality, and all the basics first. The point is they're now adding functionality and this is where the EMEA lead, he's been in this industry for 20 years just like me. And he's so good. The team that he has, again, the tech team that they have is fabulous. The tech team is on par with maybe the absolutely best tech team that I've ever experienced with CyberArk, but the Okta guys are brilliant.

Positive

Previous to using Okta Workforce Identity we used Oracle Access Manager and it was horrible. Oracle Access Manager didn't scale, it had a lot of bugs, and it was expensive. Oracle was charging obscene license fees for a product that was rubbish.

The initial setup is very easy. Building a new environment is easy because nobody is better than Okta Workforce Identity when it comes to deployment. I give the setup a ten out of ten for ease.

The implementation was completed in-house by our two engineers.

I give the solution an eight out of ten for return on investment. I would not give the solution a ten because our brand is hurting a little bit by having these non-customizable external interfaces. 

The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support. I give the pricing a six out of ten. It's not a bad product for a high price like Oracle is. It's a good product for a fair price but It's not cheap.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The thing is you can build a deployment in a day. So creating a new environment is done overnight, 24 hours. But if you say, how long does it take for us to build the connection so that CA was able to give us the data we needed to fill the roles in the solution, and then get provisioning up to work with Azure AD, and the main applications, that took us six months. Not because of Okta Workforce Identity but because of all these interfaces. That's always the killer with identity implementations. The interfaces you need to speak with to get your source, your HR data, or partner data. Maybe the best example is the partner portal. That took one year but that was more to get what's the functionality, what's the user experience. Okta Workforce Identity for engineers is a pretty solution. 

There are over 70,000 people using this solution.

We also use Thycotic Secret Server for privileged access management. So for all the tech people that need to say take backup our ERP, warehousing applications or put a new feature in the warehousing applications or upgrade the point of sale system, all those tech people get access to Thycotic Secret Server. I think there are 1000 that are actually employed onshore and offshore by my employer. And another 1000 that are tech people that maintain switches, operating technology kind of equipment. So about 2000 people have Thycotic accounts. But 70,000 have user accounts and user access. With Okta Workforce Identity everything is included with the licensing fee. If you've ever seen an Oracle licensing agreement there are loopholes in there and so you end up paying for additional items above the Access Manager, for example, you also pay for the database that it runs on. With Okta Workforce Identity it's simple. You get what you pay for. No more, no less.

I understand that Okta Workforce Identity has chosen to go for simplicity first. And that complex functionality, which we, being a very large customer... There are not many like us. We have more difficult requirements than most. But to do the simple things so well that we don't have to worry about them means we can focus on the last 10% of requirements. That will always be hard. And that's why I think the solution does 90% of the requirements so well that you need to do every day, so we can focus on the remaining 10%, which may not even be an Okta Workforce Identity problem. It is just a problem that you end up with when you have a very large business with a user portfolio that is everything from server admin from India to a trucking company that needs access to the warehousing doors in another part of the world. Okta Workforce Identity from an access management point of view is a nine out of ten.

Private Cloud

Other

We use Okta for identity and access management for our internal services, cloud services or applications (SaaS). We have a hybrid setup since we have a global workforce, so we unify our IAM services.

The most useful features of Okta for my organization are identity and access management, single sign-on, and the flexibility for hybrid setups. 

Okta enables multi-factor authentication, which enhances security, especially for SaaS applications. The integration capabilities of Okta are very flexible, with multiple protocols that can be integrated, especially for single sign-on. Any API can also be added, making it mature in terms of integrating with other identity providers, particularly Active Directory or Azure Entra ID.

Okta should have at least a local presense for countries that align with or comply with GDPR or data sovereignty, so there are no compliance or audit questions. There are integration issues with Office 365; such as groups not updating correctly in Okta. Okta should work on resolving them.

I have been in the organization for one year, and it has been more than three years now that Okta has been used.

As long as you have Internet connection, there are no issues with the stability. 

Okta is scalable and reliable, with no downtime or service disruption encountered over the years.

My team contacts Okta support for increased integration requirements. They are very supportive; they just open a ticket, and they support us very professionally.

Positive

The setup process is pretty straight-forward, having experience with different single sign-on (SSO) and identity access management, I can manage the setup process with ease. Okta provides clear guidelines and documentations as well.

Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however,  I don't have access to the commercial aspect.

I recommend evaluating your environment first. If you have a global workforce or you need flexibility and higher visibility on your identity and access management (IAM) and SSO, Okta is a good solution. My total rating for Okta is ten out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Other