What does Okta do?

Okta is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions.

Company Breakdowncybersecurity

Last updated: March 3, 2025

The TL;DR

Okta is an enterprise-focused identity provider: they take care of managing usernames, passwords, and permissions so you can focus on your apps.

If you’ve ever used “sign in with Google” to log into an app, you’ve used Single Sign On (SSO) - a way to outsource identity to third-party providers
When you build SSO into your app, you use Identity Providers (IdPs) like Google or Okta to take care of the actual authentication
Beyond just basic authentication, Okta also helps with provisioning user accounts, mobile device management, and directory sync
Enterprises (really big companies) have tight security requirements – they’re often not allowed to sign contracts with vendors that don’t support SSO

Okta’s share price has grown by almost 15x (1,500%) to $270 since their late 2017 IPO. As more enterprises move to cloud apps, Okta has been printing money – 50% YoY revenue growth over the past few years, to be exact.

Terms Mentioned

Authentication

Open Source

Database

Server

Companies Mentioned

Okta

$OKTA

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.