Okta

Have you ever heard someone with this "great" idea? "I'm going to make a webpage that has all your links. When you click them, it'll authenticate for you". It sounds great, but in reality it's extremely hard to do. Securely storing passwords, integration with enterprise systems, centralized management of the lists of links, etc. And, if you do one thing wrong, you can compromise the security of literally millions of logins.

Okta seems to have conquered the problem. It's central management is wonderful. New employees login for the first time and immediately have dozens of applications available to them. New applications are all managed through our Active Directory groups.

It has a great chrome extension that gives you access to your links from your toolbar. The smartphone app, Okta Verify, is fast and works well.

At work, I use 3 servers within Okta. One for our "corporate" servers, one for "production" and one for our parent company. The chrome extension only shows the links from the most recently accessed. So, I end up having to use the web pages, even with the extension.

Also, having multiple Okta servers doesn't work well with LastPass and other password managers. They see all my servers as the same host. But, I have different passwords. So, I basically just turn off password management for Okta.

I would say that it is easier than other team/workforce email software that our company has used in the past. However, I still find it a bit convoluted. It seems like there are many things that can be integrated into our Okta settings.

I do not know if this is the fault of Okta or our headquarters, but it is still hard to see the full benefits of using Okta for our workplace email/communications.