Look to Okta to Help Your Workforce Securely Access Office 365 GCC High
Cynthia Luu October 11, 2022
Okta helps organizations manage identities through a modern, Zero Trust approach and a vendor-agnostic platform that easily integrates with critical applications in the cloud or on-premises. One app that remains important to both commercial and public sector organizations is Office 365, also known as Microsoft 365. It is one of the most popular productivity suites across industries and geographies, and has consistently won the top rank of Okta’s annual Business at Work report, including this year’s eighth edition. The report takes an in-depth look into how Okta’s customers work today and the applications they connect to through the Okta Integration Network (OIN) in order to remain productive.
In this year’s report, Microsoft 365 continues to grow in usage, especially among Okta customers in the government sector who look to Microsoft 365 for their productivity needs. Microsoft 365 is the fastest growing application among Okta’s government sector customers, with 33% YoY growth by number of customers and 75% YoY growth by number of unique users. That’s a lot of people relying on Okta to safeguard their access to critical business tools!
Given the key role that Microsoft apps continue to play for organizations, it’s no wonder that Okta is looking to continue to empower users to safely use their technology of choice, especially for organizations that are held against the most stringent security and compliance standards. At Okta, we are excited to announce that organizations within or supporting the U.S. public sector can now extend their Okta experience to include Office 365 Government Community Cloud High through the early access (EA) of a new dedicated OIN app connector, Microsoft Office 365 Government - GCC High.
What is Microsoft Office 365 GCC High?
Microsoft has a tenant type called Office 365 GCC High, which serves as an overlay to the general Office 365 service. GCC stands for Government Community Cloud, which is a highly secure version of Office 365 built by Microsoft specifically for government entities, vendors, and contractors within the federal ecosystem. It’s called GCC High because it meets the FedRAMP High Impact requirements, and it delivers compliance with a number of federal specifications and regulations. For organizations using this suite of tools, they benefit from the built-in compliance with certifications and accreditations that are required by the U.S. public sector.
How is Okta supporting customers’ access to Office 365 GCC High?
An effective identity strategy connects all of an organization's applications, users, and devices. Okta prioritizes all integrations equally, without compromising the quality and depth of integration with any particular vendor application or technology. As a result, the OIN provides the broadest and deepest set of pre-built integrations in the market, including connectors to Office 365 and now, Office 365 GCC High.
For customers using Office 365 GCC High, Okta is offering a new OIN app connector, named Microsoft Office 365 Government - GCC High. With this new app, customers using the GCC High environment for Office 365 will be able to enjoy the consistent and secure user experience that they expect from Okta for single sign-on (SSO) and lifecycle management.
Okta’s support of Office 365 GCC High includes secure access to critical tools including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Teams, and others. This new connector provides out-of-the-box support to quickly setup SSO, access policies, step-up authentication, license/role management, user profile sync, and more. Okta customers will benefit from the built-in monitoring and alerting that comes with all of Okta’s pre-built connectors to applications, leaving the maintenance to Okta.
Okta offers a rich and growing ecosystem of app connectors that helps businesses to drive technology adoption and extend secure user access to critical business tools, which now includes Microsoft Office 365 Government - GCC High.
Start using this new integration today!
Extending modern identity and access management to Office 365 GCC High is simple. With the new pre-built connector, integration and configuration of Office 365 GCC High in Okta is made easy with a step-by-step wizard to guide you through the process.
Microsoft Office 365 Government - GCC High is available now for early access (EA). To use this new feature, customers must be on the Okta Identity Engine (OIE). Learn more about how to turn on EA features here.
To read more about Microsoft Office 365 Government - GCC High, you can find relevant documentation here: