Cloud apps out of control? Consider SSO from Okta!
Updated April 18, 2022
Cloud apps out of control? Consider SSO from Okta!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Single Sign-On
Modules Used
- Okta Workforce Identity
- MFA
- Universal Directory
- Lifecycle Management
Overall Satisfaction with The Okta Identity Cloud
We use The Okta Identity Cloud across our entire organization for SSO and MFA to almost 90 public cloud and internally developed applications. Okta allows us to gain some control over the sprawl of credentials to an ever growing list of applications.
- Okta is a bit like the Kleenex of the Single Sign On / Identity world, it's well documented and widely supported.
- Okta's ecosystem is very mature and highly available.
- Okta is generally easily understood by end users.
- Support, period. Support is the one area where Okta really needs to up their game. When I decide to open a support ticket it's because I've read the documentation and have hit a point where I'm stuck and when I receive a response referencing some documentation, it's infuriating. It's actually quite a bit beyond infuriating and I've brought it up with Okta support managers and even upgraded our support level, but I still feel as if Okta's default is to deflect and try to close tickets. It's easily among the worst support and Professional Services experiences I've ever encountered.
- It's a bit difficult to quantify ROI for something like Okta but in terms of onboarding and offboarding and improved security posture, Okta (and SSO in general) is a home run!
- Using Okta, the ability it enables to easily add users to groups to grant access to applications is game changing for an organization which needs to manage access to almost 100 applications.
- Okta also makes it immeasurably better to process decommissions, some of which happen automatically when an Okta account is disabled but most times when this is not possible, it is due to limitations on the end application side and not with Okta.
The fact that Okta is "neutral" or maybe more accurately described as flexible and widely supported is definitely a benefit. Okta makes it easy to connect to other systems via agents and multiple modes of managing credentials and access and this allows us to integrate things which are maybe not classic use cases for Single Sign On or don't directly support MFA for instance.
Some Okta / application integrations can be a bit complicated so Professional Services should definitely be considered in order to streamline implementation. That said, be sure to thoroughly review scoping and ask lots of questions. Make sure you understand exactly what's included and what's not.
Since we have not experienced any downtime at all in over two years of use, it has become something I don't really need to think about. If that was not the case, I think our adoption, especially with impatient executives, may not have been as well received.
Do you think The Okta Identity Cloud delivers good value for the price?
Not sure
Are you happy with The Okta Identity Cloud's feature set?
Yes
Did The Okta Identity Cloud live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of The Okta Identity Cloud go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy The Okta Identity Cloud again?
Yes
- Duo / Cisco Secure Access and by Duo
At the time I was using a similar product from Duo, they required a customer server to manage the SSO functionality. I believe this has changed now but when we selected Okta it was still the case. I believe the Duo MFA functionality is a bit better than Okta's and they include some good device fingerprinting info and policies which Okta does not. While you can mix and match MFA, I'd suspect many companies would not elect to do this as it might increase complexity and potentially introduce supportability issues.