Okta has announced its support for passkeys as passwordless authentication for Okta Customer Identity Cloud and the creation of its own Okta AI to enhance experiences and protect against cyber attacks.
The purpose of the passkeys is to provide phishing-resistant, passwordless authentication that developers and digital teams can easily add to their apps. Passkeys are one of several new capabilities that expand Okta’s comprehensive solution for Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), delivering convenience, security and privacy for consumer and SaaS applications.
According to Accenture’s 2023 Tech Vision survey, 85 percent of global executives view digital identity as critical, with three in four noting that authentication issues have negatively impacted their bottom line due to abandoned transactions, customer frustration and fraud.
Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO of FIDO Alliance, said: “Identity platforms like Okta will play a major role in driving widespread adoption as they provide a streamlined solution that developers and product teams can leverage to quickly upgrade consumers’ security and user experience; we applaud Okta’s support for passkeys in its Customer Identity Cloud and encourage its customers to take advantage of this important capability.”
Regarding Okta AI, the company aims to power real-time Identity actions for security, user experience and app development using the latest AI models and Okta’s unique crowdsourced threat intelligence and Identity data. Okta will be working with Google Cloud and its comprehensive AI platform, Vertex AI on Okta AI.
The company works closely with its legal and governance teams to establish clear guidelines for AI usage. These include keeping customer personal data segregated, not using sensitive data and regularly updating these guidelines to keep pace with emerging technologies.
For workforce identity, Okta AI will enable IT and security teams to optimize security policies and governance, simplify admin experiences and automate threat detection with dynamic and data-driven risk assessment.
For customer identity, Okta AI will provide inline recommendations and actions for developers and digital teams to improve the sign-up flow, distinguish human users from automated bots and build their apps faster.
Ian Lowe, director, solutions marketing EMEA of Okta, told ERP Today: “AI is not new, right? And most of the work we do in cybersecurity really relies on precursors to AI, things like machine learning. So there are lots of things happening in terms of attacks and attack vectors and AI is an enabler for making those more sophisticated, more automated and more pervasive.”
“There are over 113 million total attacks that have been observed and we are at a higher baseline of attacks than any previous year. So, AI is an enabler for that. And we’re really at an inflection point where we need to be more conscious of this fact. We know that this is a challenge for our customers and that AI is also an opportunity for us to help better prepare them to secure their environment.”
Additional reporting by Yoana Cholteeva
