Securing Digital Identities at Scale with Custom Identity Workflows

Think about the different types of identities you manage, including employees, non-employees, customers, vendors, partners, APIs, service account, and IoT devices, just to name a few. The complexity of managing digital identities at scale is arguably one of the biggest hurdles for modern IT leaders. With a host of identities connecting via cloud, on-prem, and machine-to-machine interactions, it can seem impossible to truly get a handle on it all. 

In this blog we’ll talk about ways to overcome this challenge and share a real-world customer success story about how we helped our client build a truly scalable identity security architecture that streamlines operations, improves user experience, and delivers tangible business value through a centralized registration workflow. 

Benefits of Customization

Okta offers out-of-the-box connectors to help you build bridges to your legacy systems but these generic integrations have practical limitations. Custom integration is needed to ensure seamless, secure connections between your legacy systems and your identity security program. This level of customization offers numerous advantages:

• Improved Data Accuracy: Precise mapping and synchronization of unique data attributes and formats between systems helps to reduce errors and inconsistencies.
• Automated JML Processes: Customization lets you automate the full JML lifecycle for custom, legacy, or unsupported applications, eliminating manual tasks and reducing security risks from delayed access changes.
• Granular Attribute Integration: Application-specific user attributes empower you to enforce fine-grained access controls automatically, supporting least privilege and dynamic access policies.
• Streamlined Compliance: Centralized audit trails simplify access reviews for all integrated systems, making it significantly faster and easier to demonstrate compliance across your entire environment.
• Business Alignment: Tailored identity workflows and integration logic let you match your unique business processes and application requirements precisely, improving operational efficiency.

Securing Access for Digital Identities in the Real World

In 2020, a major government client needed to modernize and improve access to services for their citizens. KeyData Cyber was retained to develop a citizen-facing SaaS authentication service meeting the following requirements:  

• Enterprise-grade SaaS that supports standards-based SSO 
• Can support legacy apps (header-based, WS-Fed, etc.) 
• Multiple IdPs including social login 
• Multi-factor authentication including SMS 
• Proactive threat monitoring / anti-phishing capabilities 
• 50k logins/hr, 99.99% Production uptime 

KeyData Cyber Director Andrew Cilla and his team designed a custom Okta registration workflow and dashboard to significantly simplify and accelerate citizen access to online government services, serving over a million individuals. The team built a centralized registration process where, after a quick email verification, citizens gain secure single sign-on access to over 24 diverse government applications (vehicle registration, benefits, licenses, etc.), including seamless integration with Interac for banking applications. 

By leveraging Okta's customizability, we created a faster and more efficient registration workflow for this client, speeding up secure access to online services. Built to scale, our custom Okta solution has now been implemented to provide seamless access to existing services and agencies and is fully extensible to integrate with future applications and scalable to grow with their needs – a true technology accelerator. 

What Can Customization Do For You? 

Managing secure access for a wide variety of digital identities, connecting via myriad environments can be a significant challenge with huge implications for your business. While out-of-the-box connectors offer basic functionality, achieving the level of security, efficiency, and compliance required at scale demands more precise integration. 

Our client's success with a centralized, scalable registration workflow powered by custom Okta hooks is a testament to this. Customization delivers the crucial benefits you need: improved data accuracy, automated JML processes across all applications, granular access controls based on unique attributes, streamlined compliance reporting, and direct alignment with your business's specific workflows.

Don't let the complexity of your tech stack limit your identity security program. Reach out to KeyData Cyber to learn how our custom integration expertise can solve your organization’s unique security and access challenges and deliver real business value.