What does Okta do?

The core Okta product: identity

Every app you use requires authentication – you have an account, and every now and then you need to prove that you are who you say you are, so you can use that account. The most popular method of implementing that is username and password, stored on company servers. But for reasons that are obvious to anyone sharing a Netflix account, this auth method is _not _ideal: you need a different username/password for every service you use, and passwords are very hackable. If you’re a large enterprise, you don’t want your employees creating new accounts with vulnerable usernames and passwords for all of the tools they’re using. So instead, you will outsource authentication.

Okta is one of the companies that you might outsource this to. The easiest way to understand this is through the perspective of the user: let’s imagine today is your first day working at FedEx corporate (an Okta customer). FedEx uses a bunch of tools that you need access to: Looker for data, Salesforce for a CRM, and Gmail for email.

If FedEx is using SSO (they are), instead of a username and password for each of those tools, you have one Okta login that you use for all of them. When you load the Looker app, it will prompt you to sign in via Okta, and you’ll get redirected to an Okta login screen. If you authenticate with Okta successfully, you’ll get sent back to Looker and can get started.