Book Image

Okta Administration Up and Running - Second Edition

By : HenkJan de Vries, Lovisa Stenbäcken Stjernlöf
Book Image

Okta Administration Up and Running - Second Edition

By: HenkJan de Vries, Lovisa Stenbäcken Stjernlöf

Overview of this book

Identity and access management (IAM) is a set of policies and technologies used to ensure an organization’s security, by carefully assigning roles and access to users and devices. This book will get you up and running with Okta, an IAM service that can help you manage both employees and customers. The book begins by helping you understand how Okta can be used as an IAM platform, before teaching you about Universal Directory and how to integrate with other directories and apps, as well as set up groups and policies for Joiner, Mover, and Leaver flows. This updated edition helps you to explore agentless desktop single sign-on (SSO) and multifactor authentication (MFA) solutions, and showing how to utilize Okta to meet NIST requirements. The chapters also walk you through Okta Workflows, low-/no-code automation functionalities, and custom API possibilities used to improve lifecycle management. Finally, you’ll delve into API access auditing and management, where you’ll discover how to leverage Advanced Server Access (ASA) for your cloud servers. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to implement Okta to enhance your organization's security and be able to use the book as a reference guide for the Okta certification exam.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
1
Part 1:Getting Started with Okta
8
Part 2: Extending Okta

Advanced features of Okta

If your organization needs to go deeper than general IAM, you might need to look at Okta’s more advanced features. Let’s look at them now.

Okta Advanced Server Access

Okta ASA lets us extend our zero trust practices toward server accounts. Okta can manage access to both user or service accounts to Linux or Windows servers across different cloud vendors, such as GCP, AWS, and Azure, or on-premises servers. In Okta, your admins get a great overview of who has access to what and can see individual logins in log reports. ASA works with a lightweight agent and is installed in your infrastructure landscape.

Workflows

With Workflows, you can automate many business processes using a simple if this, then that methodology with no-code configurations. Okta provides a library of connections to many popular cloud applications, and Workflows can also integrate with custom APIs. Some examples of where Workflows can be used include the following:

  • On and off-boarding enhancements
  • Resolving conflicts when new users are created
  • Sharing reports on a monthly basis

Okta Access Gateway

Okta Access Gateway (OAG) makes it possible to implement modern cloud-based access management to on-premises legacy applications. With this product, you can gather all your identity needs in one place, making them easier to manage. It’s easy to integrate, with templates and native on-premises integrations. By replacing your current web access management (WAM) system, you can bring your applications to your users in a modern and non-restrictive way. Additionally, you can also secure those apps even more with extra MFA functionality.

API Access Gateway

Leveraging Okta’s API Access Gateway allows the developer of your tools, systems, and platforms to be securely managed by Okta, while they can focus on their primary tasks. The processes of adding security and allowing scopes to grant access to your own systems are managed by Okta. The shift of responsibility goes from the developer to the security and operations team. Focusing on management with out-of-box integrations and authorization servers is core to Okta’s API Access Management.