Newest Update from Okta's Webinar featuring new Admin role

July 17th, 2020

6 min read

In Okta's latest Webinar they talked about what's new. Okta' Release Life Cycle is broken down into three types: Beta, EA (Early Access) and GA (General Availability)

Beta: features are opt-in features that you can try out in your org, and provide feedback on to help shape the product's future. Okta Admins can sign up to participate in feature beta programs on the Okta support site.
Early Access (EA): features are opt-in features that you can try out in your org by asking Okta Support to enable them. Additionally, the Features page in the Okta Admin console allows Super Admins to enable and disable some EA features themselves.
General Availability (GA): features are available to all orgs automatically according to each customer's SKU. You don't need to enable them in the console of contact Okta Support.

What are the new Okta features?

UD (Universal Directory)

Expanded LDAP Directory Integrations
New Admin Roles

Security

Beta

Device visibility and remote sign-out
Okta FastPass
If you want a consistent passwordless experience ON ANY DEVICE, FROM ANYWHERE, Okta FastPass is the answer
Okta Access Gateway
- Support for leading laaS (Logging as a service) platform
  - AWS (GA Q4 2019)
  - GA (GA Q1 2020)
  - Oracle Cloud (GA Q2 2020)

Risk-based Auth for Okta Verify

Advanced Server Access
- Enhanced User Attribute Management - Better support for brownfield deployments by preserving existing attributes and configurations - Enable POSIX-schema attributes to be sourced in UD, automatically provisioned via SCIM - Consistently apply server account Username, UID, GID, home dir, and default shell

LCM (Lifecycle Management)

Beta

Import Monitoring
- View the details of a current import process
- View the details of a completed import process

Okta Integrations

Enhanced AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) Integration - Sign into AWS SSO with a single click to get access to all your AWS accounts and resources
Centrally Manage Users in AWS SSO` - Centrally manage assignments of users and groups to AWS accounts and permission sets
Automated Provisioning for AWS SSO - Benefits - Automate user provisioning from Okta to AWS SSO - Centralized management of permissions in AWS SSO - Push groups to AWS SSO with Group Push

Enhanced AWS SSO Integration with CLI Support

- AWS CLI users can authenticate with Okta credentials + MFA to get access to their AWS accounts and roles

Developer Experience

Golang SDK Update to Support More Use Cases
- Added support for more than 85 API endpoints, rate limiting, bug fixes, and enhancements
OAuth for Okta support in Management SDKs
- All Management SDKs now support OAuth for Okta (Okta is encouraging customers to use this authentication mechanism)
PKCE (Pronounced Pixy) is now the default
- All of our latest front-end SDKs, including the Sign-In Widget after version 4.0, now use the PKCE flow by default
New Error Codes page on Developer Docs

User Experience

New End User Dashboard - Modern Look and Feel - More Responsive - Mobile Friendly - Better Navigation - Accessibility Compliance
- New Okta Browser Plugin

What's Next for the End User Dashboard? - GA (H2 2020) - Hide Quick Access section - Translation and localization support for all 27 languages - Full banner and notification support (e.g new app assignment) - Future - More branding and visual customization

Limited Access

Control in-app actions based on device context
Networking for complex environments - Multiple Network Interfaces (NICs) increases connectivity to multiple subnets or vnets - High Availability directly from the management console improves scalability
Sudo Entitlements Management for Linux - Central management plane for enforcing least privilege access via Sudo - Admins can whitelist command sets for specific groups across series of servers - Okta automates the end-to-end lifecycle of individual sudoers drop-in files
Okta Integration Network Catalog v2 - Key Changes - Fuzzy Search - New home page layout and categories - Improved documentation about key integrations

Submit OpenID Connect Apps - Yes there will be support for submitting OIDC apps in the OIN! - Key Features - Self Service portal - Create and share OpenID Connect applications - Accessible in Okta Integration Network to all customers

Password Import Inline Hook - Pause Okta authentication to call out to a 3rd party system - Validate passwords within the 3rd party system - Import valid password into Okta's UD
Support for Multiple O365 domains - Simplified rollout of new Office 365 domains - Centralized administration for user assignment - Centralized policy management of all O365 domains

Coming Soon!

Beta

- `O365 GCC High App`
    - Support for SSO and LCM
    - Designed to meet requirements of the United States Department of Defense
    - Available in the OIN (Okta Integration Network)