Okta reveals October security breach was much more damaging

After reassuring the public that only one percent of their customers had been affected by the security breach reported in October 2023, Okta has backtracked, revealing that the effects of the high-profile hack against corporate digital IDs are more serious.

In a post published last week, the access control and identity verification company said that hackers ran and downloaded a report that contained the names and email addresses of all Okta customer support system users, known as the Okta Help Center. In the initial analysis shared on November 3, Okta claimed that only 134 customers were affected by the breach.

In its new announcement, the enterprise digital identity and access management company warns that its customers may face phishing and social engineering attacks as names and email addresses were among the data that was breached. The company recommended turning on multi-factor authentication (MFA) and considering phishing-resistant authenticators.

Okta says it has more than 17,000 customers and manages around 50 billion users as of March 2023.

The San Francisco-headquartered firm has faced criticism over its handling of the October breach. Okta was first warned of the issue by its customer BeyondTrust on October 2nd. The company, however, did not respond until October 19, according to BeyondTrust.

The revelation of the extent of the breach sent shares down as much as 7 percent in pre-market trading last Wednesday, CNBC reports. The stock, however, recovered after Okta posted that its third-quarter earnings came in at $584 million, better than the consensus estimate of $563 million.

The last two years have been bumpy for Okta with breaches detected in March 2023 and December 2022. An insider trading class action was filed against the company in April 2023.

Despite these issues, the company revised its anticipated fiscal 2023 revenue total to between $2.21 billion and $2.22 billion – 1.8 percent to 1.4 percent, respectively, higher than its previous guidance to the market.

Article Topics

cybersecurity  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  identity access management (IAM)  |  Okta