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

Using single sign-on with Okta

While we will talk a lot about logging into different types of applications and their security steps, Okta, of course, has its own sign-in options. This is, in general, the cornerstone of every end user’s experience. When a user signs into Okta, it won’t require any further password inputs in any application. This first encounter with Okta’s SSO ensures that the user has identified themselves according to the global session policies. They are now allowed to sign in to any integrated applications assigned to them unless specific application policies have been set up.

The login process for Okta is straightforward and doesn’t ask for any high-level understanding of the process. Signing in is as simple as any other application, but on the backend, you will see that Okta allows for a much more granular methodology, making sure all sign-ins are checked against any policy that has been set up.

Every Okta organization (org) is...