Who is Okta?
Okta is an enterprise identity and access management platform that provides authentication, authorization, and user lifecycle services for workforce and customer applications.
- Cloud-based identity and access management for workforce and customer users
- Single Sign-On (SSO) and centralized access policies across Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), on-premises (on-prem), and custom applications (security)
- Multi-factor and passwordless authentication services (security)
- User provisioning, lifecycle management, and directory integration (identity governance)
- API-focused identity services for developers integrating authentication into applications (developer identity services)
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More About Okta
Okta provides cloud-delivered identity and access management services that enterprises use to control how employees, partners, and customers authenticate to applications and resources across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
The platform centers on identity as a service, exposing capabilities such as SSO (security), multi-factor authentication (MFA) (security), and universal directory services (identity management) through a combination of admin consoles, policy engines, and APIs. Organizations use these capabilities to implement consistent access controls across web, mobile, and on-prem systems, including commercial SaaS products, internal custom applications, and legacy applications connected via secure gateways or federation standards.
Okta supports standardized identity and security protocols such as Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Open Authorization 2.0 (OAuth 2.0), and OpenID Connect (OIDC) (identity and access standards), which enables integration with third-party applications and services. Through these protocols, Okta acts as an Identity Provider (IdP), issuing tokens or assertions that applications consume for authentication and authorization decisions. It also connects with existing directories such as Active Directory or LDAP-based services (directory integration), allowing enterprises to synchronize user attributes and group memberships into Okta-managed identities.
For workforce identity, organizations use Okta to enforce access policies, conditional access, and step-up authentication based on device, network, and risk signals, and to automate user lifecycle tasks such as onboarding, role changes, and deprovisioning. For customer identity, Okta offers services that allow product and engineering teams to embed authentication, account management, and security policies directly into digital products, using SDKs and APIs that support common programming languages and platforms.
From a directory and marketplace taxonomy perspective, Okta fits within identity and access management (IAM), access management (AM), multi-factor authentication (MFA), SSO, customer identity and access management (CIAM), and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA). Its capabilities intersect with zero trust security architectures by allowing policy-based access decisions that do not rely solely on traditional network perimeters, and by integrating identity signals into broader Security Operations (SecOps) and monitoring workflows.
Our description of Okta. Updated December 2025.
