Innovation ignited: How development leaders make authentication an innovation engine

Okta

December 11, 2024

Developers are the backbone of innovation. What they focus on can accelerate or hinder the delivery of new products. Authentication and authorization have always been a top development priority but increases in data volumes, data usage, mobility, and other factors are creating significant complexity.

Navigating increasing auth challenges with manual, cumbersome approaches —while also trying to keep up with the latest security standards and regulations — can be overwhelming. This situation can result in frustrated developers, delayed launch dates, and an increased risk of security gaps that can cause outages, costly non-compliance fees, and damaged business reputations. AI and GenAI adoption only amplify developers' auth challenges because models require massive amounts of information for accuracy and all data usage must align with evolving security and compliance regulations.

How organizations manage auth also determines their effectiveness in protecting data against evolving threats, complying with regulations, and improving brand reputation. Building auth services from scratch or relying on features in legacy systems can easily lead to compliance and governance missteps caused by Identity fragmentation across applications and systems. After all, siloed Identity management is difficult to track, making it harder to safeguard customer data.

Chief technology officers, directors, and development leaders can empower their teams with a unified digital Identity strategy that includes intelligent, integrated auth capabilities that minimize complexity and risk while improving experience. By building and maintaining authentication with less effort and simplifying governance and compliance, developers can spend the bulk of their time doing what they excel at, bringing new products and services to market faster.

Moving from complexity to clarity — and ideas to impact

Authentication and authorization are critical vehicles for creating innovative solutions and differentiating experiences for customers and employees. That’s because users expect scalable, frictionless access to apps, digital tools, and cloud services.

To make this possible while enabling teams to manage all their tasks, developers need easy-to-use auth systems that minimize the need for custom code and specialized security skills. That way, developers have what they need to build flexible solutions that can easily integrate with other technologies, support new authentication methods, and facilitate new use cases including AI and GenAI — all in a way that minimizes risk and delivers positive user experiences.

How LaunchNotes uses authentication to drive growth

LaunchNotes equips product and development teams with the tools they need to effectively communicate, understand, and manage the what, when, and why of product roadmaps. To drive growth, especially in the enterprise customer space, LaunchNotes replaced their authentication software with a unified solution from Okta. It provides the enterprise-grade authentication and authorization capabilities prospective customers were looking for, like single sign-on (SSO).

Okta is also easy to use. With it, developers were able to set up a proof of concept in one hour and deploy their new auth solution, including SSO capabilities, within less than three weeks. Within one week of going live, LaunchNotes’ first enterprise customer signed up and more than 10 customers re-engaged.

Developers are also realizing ongoing efficiencies with their unified auth solution. Today, they spend 95% less time managing password policies for B2B customers. They implemented social logins in just minutes. And now, they onboard new customers up to 20% faster, which improves the experience of customers and employees.

How Cribl transforms auth to bring new products to market faster

Cribl helps organizations collect, process, route, and analyze logs, traces, and other telemetry data from their in-house and third-party systems and apps. Because this data is critical in establishing and managing seamless, protected communication between systems, Cribl provides customers with strict access controls. For years, Cribl used role-based access controls (RBAC) to authorize users.

However, when they introduced virtual Workspaces for their customers, Cribl quickly recognized that their RBAC approach could not scale with increasing complexity and growth. Developers were spending too much time manually building and maintaining auth systems. To set up authentication for just one Workspace, they had to manually define up to 400 roles in a JSON Web Token.

After evaluating their best options, Cribl’s teams unanimously chose to adopt a unified auth solution from Okta. It enables granular RBAC and centralized auth models that are flexible, scalable, and easy to manage. Today, developers input their new products into their authorization model and Okta automatically handles the mapping between data owners as directed. As a result, what used to take developers months of manual effort now takes just weeks. And because developers can set up authorization for new products 80% faster, they have more time to spend on innovation.

How Alma Media builds and maintains Identity security with less effort

Media and service company Alma Media was struggling with siloed auth solutions. The organization operates more than 100 websites and brands used by millions of customers, and every site had its own login method. This meant customers couldn’t navigate between corporate brand sites without having to log in again. Cumbersome user experiences cut Alma Media's conversions in half. Additionally, developers had to create, manage, and scale each site’s standalone authentication solutions, leaving them little time to work on impactful projects.

To achieve their goals, Alma Media adopted a unified auth solution from Okta that has dramatically simplified development. As a result, Alma Media improved their user experience, security, and innovation potential. Customers now have SSO, so they no longer have to manage multiple IDs and passwords across sites. They can also opt to log in to sites using their social media accounts.

Additionally, in-house developers and IT teams now use the same flexible solution for managing auth across sites. This straightforward approach reduces risk, boosts efficiency, and delivers measurable savings. Alma Media has decreased their total cost of ownership by 30% and license expenses by 10%.

Ignite innovation at your organization

Maximizing the time your developers have to create differentiating solutions that improve security, experience, and innovation is easier with a unified strategy. Okta equips organizations with intelligent, integrated authentication and authorization tools that reduce complexity so developers can turn ideas into impactful solutions faster.

No-code, low-code, and pro-code tools accelerate the development of automated flows that teams can quickly adapt to meet current and future use cases. Built-in capabilities also simplify governance and compliance, including certification and regulatory support, data sovereignty, and centralized controls.

Free your devs and simplify auth management! Learn More about Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)