Book Image

Okta Administration: Up and Running

By : Lovisa Stenbäcken Stjernlöf, HenkJan de Vries
Book Image

Okta Administration: Up and Running

By: Lovisa Stenbäcken Stjernlöf, HenkJan de Vries

Overview of this book

IAM, short for identity and access management, is a set of policies and technologies for ensuring the security of an organization through careful role and access assignment for users and devices. With this book, you’ll get up and running with Okta, an identity and access management (IAM) service that you can use for both employees and customers. Once you’ve understood how Okta can be used as an IAM platform, you’ll learn about the Universal Directory, which covers how to integrate other directories and applications and set up groups and policies. As you make progress, the book explores Okta’s single sign-on (SSO) feature and multifactor authentication (MFA) solutions. Finally, you will delve into API access management and discover how you can leverage Advanced Server Access for your cloud servers and Okta Access Gateway for your on-premises applications. By the end of this Okta book, you’ll have learned how to implement Okta to enhance your organization's security and be able to use this book as a reference guide for the Okta certification exam.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with Okta
8
Section 2: Extending Okta

Exploring the origins of Okta

Okta was started by Todd McKinnon (CEO) and Frederic Kerrest (COO), former Salesforce employees. They saw that the cloud wasn't just a product for the big leagues. They predicted it would be necessary for anyone who would want to grow their business. They started the business in the middle of the 2008 recession, with Andreessen Horowitz investing as one of the first capital injections for Okta in 2010. In 2017, Okta went public with its IPO and valuation of $1.2 billion.

The name Okta is derived from the unit of measurement for clouds covering the sky at any given moment. On the scale, 0 okta is a clear blue sky and 8 oktas is completely overcast. The wordplay of Okta (in Greek, octa is 8) and the fact that Okta wants to cover all of the cloud access by becoming the identity standard, thus creating a completely overcast sky (8 oktas), is well thought out.

Since Okta came into the space of IAM, they have steadily grown to the leading vector...