Okta CEO says total addressable identity and access management market near $80B

The identity and access management (IAM) market continues to adapt to the surge of new users and use cases prompted by the combination of stay-at-home orders and cybersecurity breaches. In this context, Entrust and Yubico have partnered on government IAM, LoginRadius has added a feature, Jamf has launched a biometric access control app, and a new certification program has been launched by IDPro.

The challenges associated with using biometrics in the IAM space are mainly solved through effective integration, Okta Co-founder and CEO Todd McKinnon tells Barron’s in a recent interview.

Developers are forced to deal with complexity in the implementation of biometrics, like any authentication method, but without passing it on to users. That complexity includes challenges around resetting biometric credentials, in an example provided by McKinnon.

One of the main IAM challenges faced by companies undergoing forced digital transformation has been bringing together disparate back-end databases with unified user profiles, McKinnon says.

Discussing the effects of the pandemic, McKinnon says use of Okta’s SMS service for multi-factor authentication (MFA) spiked by a thousand percent at the beginning of the pandemic. The company also helped put 25,000 employees of the State of Iowa online, as well as helping people throughout the state access public services, as the pandemic struck.

Asked about Okta’s acquisition of Auth0, McKinnon lauds its developer APIs for the ease with which they allow businesses to build digital identity capabilities into their new or existing applications.

The total addressable market for Okta is $80 billion, between the workforce and customer digital identity markets, according to McKinnon.

Entrust and Yubico partner to increase MFA options for U.S. government agencies

A partnership has been formed between Entrust and Yubico to provide strong authentication to U.S. government employees through the issuance of YubiKeys.

Entrust contributes its PKI technology to add derived personal identity verification (PIV) credentials to the YubiKey 5 Series and YubiKey 5 FIPS Series.

The move allows agencies to issue derived PIV credentials without issuing smart cards.

The partnership addresses the recently-announced mandate for American government agencies to adopt multi-factor authentication (MFA) to enhance their security.

Re-Authentication feature launched by LoginRadius

LoginRadius has introduced a re-authentication feature to its consumer IAM platform to enable businesses to provide their customers with enhanced security to perform transactions after they have successfully logged in.

The company says the feature can help address common cybersecurity challenges, prevent session hijacking, and help businesses maintain the trust of their customers.

“Businesses today are strictly in need of a robust authentication system that shuns any chance of unauthorized access, especially the one handling heaps of consumer identities. Re-authentication allows enterprises to add another stringent layer of authentication to their overall data security mechanism,” says Deepak Gupta, CTO of LoginRadius.

Jamf brings Face ID to enterprise Macs

Jamf has launched an iPhone app to enable biometric unlock of Macs on an enterprise management system, 9to5Mac reports.

The new Jamf Unlock uses the iPhone as a bridge to provide native device biometrics for logical access control to macOS devices, which do not support Face ID. The app can be used as part of a Jamf Connect workflow for passwordless authentication, though the solution is available to companies that do not use the mobile device management platform.

Expertise validation service launched

Industry association IDPro has launched the Certified Identity Professional (CIDPRO) program to provide digital identity professionals and employers with a way to validate IAM industry knowledge.

The program was unveiled during a keynote presentation by IDPro Co-founder and Certification Committee Chair Sarah Cecchetti at Ping Identity’s Identiverse event. It has been created through a peer-review process and is vendor-neutral, according to the announcement.

To achieve CIDPRO certification, candidates must pass an exam covering functional and operational elements of identity solutions, core concepts in identity security, rules, standards, identifiers, identity lifecycle and identity proofing.

Article Topics

access management  |  biometrics  |  cybersecurity  |  digital identity  |  enterprise  |  Entrust  |  identity access management (IAM)  |  identity management  |  identity verification  |  IDPro  |  LoginRadius  |  Okta  |  Yubico