Forum21 Europe

Born over 150 years ago, Croix-Rouge Française now has 60,000 volunteers around the world engaged in providing humanitarian aid. Connecting these dispersed users to the various systems and apps they need is challenging, but couldn’t be more important.

In the past, setting up access was time consuming, taking up to 2 weeks for a single user. There were also security concerns over authorisations and determining whether people still belonged to the organisation. Croix-Rouge wanted a global identity and access management solution that would drive efficiency and simplify the experience for its members.

With Okta, it now takes as little as 10 minutes to validate a new account. Using Okta Workflows, the organisation has been able to automate processes and speed up lifecycle management. Users appreciate the simplicity and speed of being able to get through to federated applications via Single Sign On. It’s also been a game changer in regions where connectivity can’t be assured, allowing offline multi-factor authentication via Google Authenticator so people can continue to access their apps and inbox.

Technology in the last 12 months has become integral to our lives. We’ve relied on it not just to work remotely, but as a substitute to meet basic human needs – interacting with friends and family, getting food delivered, or attending doctors’ appointments.

But it’s also introduced challenges. We’ve been exposed to risk, questioned how and where our information has been tracked. Trust has been lost – not just in technology, but in governments, business leaders and public health.

This matters to us as technology leaders because technology won’t be able to reach its full potential without trust. In the next decade, our job will be to secure what we build, to consider the bad ways our technology can be used, as well as the good, and rebuild trust in the technologies that are critical to the foundations of our societies.

At Okta, we believe Zero Trust security can help us ensure we don’t become a Zero Trust society. By building technology that continuously gives people the right access to right resources in the right context, we take responsibility for the security of users, rather than putting it on them. Tech leaders must make trust the cornerstone of the technology of the future – at Okta, we’ll continue to put it at the top of our roadmap.