Sensitive personal data and a growing list of platform
FinMkt’s cloud-based technology matches consumers looking to finance a purchase with lenders offering financing options — often at the point of sale, in real time. FinMkt handles personal, financial, and banking data that’s linked to the equally sensitive data in its partners’ and customers’ databases, Identity and Access Management (IAM) is paramount for FinMkt.
Protecting this data means adhering to strict financial industry rules and regulations on data governance. While their data was safe, the company was searching for a centralized solution to simplify existing IAM functions while maintaining secure access and a simple user interface.
“Onboarding and offboarding employees was a manual, time-consuming, and training-intensive process,” acknowledges Saima Khot, who, as FinMkt’s Senior Support Manager, is well aware of the risk management issues that come with business transactions involving relevant financial information.
“Each platform, including our own, required a username and password,” she recalls. “Using the same password for each platform posed a security risk, but remembering a different password for each platform became more difficult as we grew and added more tools,” she states, listing several of the company’s most-used platforms, including Jira, Confluence, HubSpot, and their email service provider, as well as specialized tools for accounting and marketing.
Streamlined onboarding, offboarding, and end-user sign-on
FinMkt began due diligence for a unified IAM solution and were immediately drawn to Okta’s intuitive dashboards for administrators, its easy-to-use Single Sign-On solution, and its seamless, out-of-the-box integrations with a large number of applications. Within a month, the entire FinMkt team, which numbers over 150 and is spread across the United States, Canada, and India, was using Okta Workforce Identity to sign into their own platform as well as many applications in use at FinMkt.
“Okta has made onboarding and offboarding employees so much easier,” observes Khot. “Lifecycle management for IAM is now efficient, secure, and frictionless.” With Okta Workflows, role-based access is handled in one place, streamlining onboarding, offboarding, and updating access privileges as a team member’s responsibilities change.
“In the past, we’d have to go into each application and set up a new user manually,” she recalls, noting that the applications were often managed by different teams, further decentralizing an inefficient process. “Now, the first time a new employee logs into their email, after a user sets their password, they automatically have access to all the applications they need to do their job. A process that could sometimes take days now takes only a few minutes.”
Using Okta’s Multi-Factor Authentication means that FinMkt team members need only log into their email at the beginning of their work day and tap a push notification sent to their phone to regain access. “Okta Single Sign-On and Multi-Factor Authentication give us device verification, location verification, and user verification all in one,” Khot comments. “And Workforce Identity provides instant zero-trust architecture and automated user lifecycle management.”
A game-changer for IT, and a boost for security and compliance
As an admin, Khot can see all of FinMkt’s users — active, suspended, and deactivated — in a single place, and grant access to new applications automatically or in just a few clicks for ad-hoc requests. Auto-generated user logs enable her to verify logins if issues related to data integrity or access authorization ever arise. “Centralizing Identity and Access Management was a game-changer,” she says. “It gives us the control we need for internal data governance as well as compliance with external regulations.”
Passwords resets, which FinMkt configures in tandem with various financial services security regulations, can be self-managed by users. Khot notes, however, that Okta’s admin dashboard makes helping users who have forgotten their username or password “quick and easy,” saving the IT team even more precious time.
Okta also satisfies many of FinMkt’s compliance requirements. “Just being able to document that Identity governance is handled centrally using Okta goes a long way toward proving how seriously we take issues of security and compliance,” Khot adds.
With Identity unified and simplified, FinMkt continues to find new ways to improve its employee experience and better serve its customers.
About FinMkt
FinMkt’s cloud-based technology powers consumer lending, point-of-sale financing, and payment solutions for lenders, healthcare providers, consumer goods companies, and other enterprises. FinMkt offers both turnkey and bespoke SaaS options that integrate with any CRM. Its API-based white-labeled embedded products are supported by live customer service representatives 24/7.
