IDaaS provider Okta’s global event “Oktane20” overview

"Oktane20" was held online from the end of March to the beginning of April 2020. Hosted by Okta, which provides IDaaS, this event was held online for the first time, with more than 20,000 people pre-registering. As the event was open to the public globally, many people from overseas also registered, with about 14,000 participants from the United States and about 1,200 from APAC including Japan.

This time, about 20 speakers appeared in Keynote alone, more than 65 breakout sessions were prepared in total, and more than 50 guest speakers participated. There are more than 30 sponsors, mainly cloud providers such as AWS and Box. Okta, which hosted the event, commented, ``We have received excellent responses from the participants, and we were able to share Okta's vision with many people.''

Okta's 3 Keys

Let's take a look at Keynote at the event. At the beginning, Okta CEO Todd McKinnon looked back at last year's Oktane video at home while directing "some telework" in which a child crosses in front of the camera. Taking into account the recent situation, he will talk about the circumstances that led to the decision to hold the event online. Ryan Carlson from the marketing department explained the overview of Oktane20 this time, and collaborated with DonorsChoose, a US-based non-profit organization, to introduce community support at schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call for donations towards -19. At the same time, Todd thanked healthcare providers for their dedicated support during COVID-19.

We first talked about three key things about Okta, an IDaaS company rooted in trust. "Our number one priority is the health and safety of our team, nothing more important," Todd said. And "to provide customers with the basic services they want while maintaining business continuity with safe services." And the last thing I mentioned is "to respond flexibly to the success of our customers." At the same time, he introduced the company's long-term vision of "Enabling every organization to use every technology". “With the optimal technology that is not tied to a specific vendor or specific platform, you can freely build the environment you need to move your business forward. Our mission is to make this technology easy to use.” explained. As an environment for this purpose, the company has created an integrated "Okta Integration Network" that enables flexible connections to any environment, including applications, networks, devices, and platforms.

Positioning of the open network “Okta Identity Cloud”

He emphasizes that what Okta has done so far is to pull out the identities built into each platform, such as Active Directory and Oracle, and make them central as integrated identities. "This identity platform connects and protects people. Choosing an identity platform is one of the most important platform choices," Todd said. However, platforms need to prepare scenarios for interacting with users, devices, and other platforms to support increasingly complex use cases. “You need a programmable platform, not just for configuration management. And not just to support the code that IT teams use, but also security teams, development teams, and even business leaders to have code on the platform. We need an environment where we can run it,” said Todd. That's why we're building the Okta Identity Cloud as the world's leading open network for a neutral, secure, and scalable work environment.

Six components of Okta

Okta provides functions to provide customers with a secure digital experience, where employees, partners, etc. can access all technologies as "Okta Products". He explained that six core services are provided as common services "Okta Platform Services" to make them work. These are the existing ones called "Direcories", "Integrations" and "Insights", and the newly added "Identity Engine", "Workflows" and "Devices".

"Direcories" is Okta's core service, a universal directory that can store user information with a flexible schema, and a service that enables lifecycle management. "Integrations" is a service that can be integrated using API templates and toolkits on the Okta Integration Network, and provides a mechanism for realizing integration across the community. "Insights" is a service that collects all the data generated by the Octa service and can be used for visualization and awareness. The Insights include Threat Insight, which blocks malicious IP addresses, Health Insight, and UserInsight, which recommends optimal security settings.

And this time, "Identity Engine", "Workflows" and "Devices" have newly appeared.

Okta FastPass demo for easy access to any environment

This is where Teju Shyamsundar, Senior Product Marketing at Okta, comes in and says, ``Every organization is constantly fighting to balance security and convenience, and passwords contribute greatly to that battle. There is always the danger of leaks into the environment,” he says of the issues facing the existing environment. With Okta FastPass, you can provide the best experience for your users while minimizing your existing infrastructure's reliance on directories. Here, a Windows 10 device registered in "Devices" in advance was sent to a remote site, signed in to an Okta account from Okta Verify on the device, and a demonstration was conducted in which all applications can be accessed simply by authenticating with Windows Hello. did. He also introduced that the same experience can be obtained by enabling Okta Verify for non-Windows devices such as iPhone. A demo showed how FastPass lets you log in to Slack without entering a password, even on a device that is privately owned and not managed by your IT department. He also mentioned that FastPass will be an important component for achieving zero trust security based on user trust and device trust. In addition, there was also a demonstration of restricting access to reports using Salesforce and a demonstration of applying a policy that denies access to corporate resources if the device is infected with malware such as ransomware.

Mr. Todd looks back on Oktane's memories so far while introducing his wife as the last guest. Then, mentioning donations to the community related to COVID-19, gratitude to members for hosting Oktane, and soliciting proposals for Okta for remote work required for various volunteer activities, and finally Okta's tradition of singing songs Following the above, he ended the Keynote by humming The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun."