How Kyocera AVX Maximizes Security and Efficiency with Okta Workflows and Splunk

Situation: Scaling security practices to meet the needs of a global workforce 

Kyocera AVX, a global manufacturing company, faced several challenges in scaling their security practices to protect their complex technical environment and global workforce. Initially, they used manual processes for some IT and security tasks. This included manually initiating employee training on MFA policies and responding to suspicious activity. However, this approach became costly and labor intensive.

In this blog post, you will learn how Kyocera AVX uses Okta Workflows and Splunk to not only improve security, but to also save over $160,000 and 5,000 hours by automating critical tasks, and analyzing user data.

Solution: Automating IT and security tasks with Okta Workflows

Kyocera AVX found great success in leveraging Okta Workflows to streamline various tasks in the organization. Some of the use cases they automated with Okta Workflows include: 

• Driving new hire MFA training  
• Enabling MFA on suspicious activity and notifying the user
• Implementing mass email and username changes
• Informing admins when a user is deactivated
• Using data from Active Directory and adding it to the Okta profile (without having AD as a master)
• Adding users to applications from a CSV (with only first and last name)
• Creating tickets based on Okta app events

Let’s explore how Kyocera AVX implemented Workflows to solve the first two use cases — driving new hire MFA training, and enabling MFA on suspicious activity.

New hire MFA training

One of the key challenges Kyocera AVX faced was the onboarding of new employees and the implementation of multifactor authentication (MFA). With a global presence and a diverse workforce, it was important for them to find a way to efficiently educate employees about MFA and ensure its adoption. This is where Workflows came in.

The Kyocera AVX team created a workflow that would trigger when a new employee was onboarded into Okta. This workflow would send an email to the employee explaining the importance of MFA and providing them with step-by-step instructions on how to enable it. This automation not only saved the team time and energy but also ensured all employees were properly educated on MFA.
 

Streamline new hire MFA training Workflow

Suspicious activity response

Another use case for Workflows at Kyocera AVX is the enabling of MFA in response to suspicious activity. When a user reports suspicious activity on their account, the workflow sends an email or Slack message to the user thanking them for their vigilance and explaining that MFA will be enabled on their account as a measure to help defend against potential threats. This not only helps to secure the organization, but it also ensures that employees are informed of any actions taken on their account.
 

Respond to suspicious activity Workflow

In addition to these specific use cases, the team also utilized Workflows to automate various other processes within the organization. For example, Kyocera AVX implemented a workflow that sends an email to administrators when a user is deactivated, ensuring that all necessary parties are informed of the change.

Visualizing data and impact with Workflows and Splunk

To visualize and analyze the data generated by Workflows, the Kyocera AVX team created a Workflows to send Workflows data to Splunk. Splunk is their security information management (SIM) system of choice for aggregating and collecting data, and it has proven to be a valuable tool in understanding the impact of Workflows. To build this reusable flow, the Kyocera team created a helper flow that gets called by all other Workflows after this, without further implementation needed. Through Splunk dashboards, the team can track the number of workflow calls, see the results of workflows over time, and identify any errors.

The impact

One of the key metrics measured at Kyocera AVX is the time and money saved through the use of Workflows. Kyocera AVX saved 5,398 hours and $161,942 by automating their IT and security tasks with Workflows. They also significantly reduced the time and energy spent on analyzing user information by sending Okta Workflows data to Splunk. Additionally, they have improved the efficiency and security of their organization through the use of Workflows.

To learn more about Okta Workflows, watch more Workflows video content or visit the Workflows Community Team section of our blog.