How Okta and Palo Alto Networks forge an identity-powered security defense system

A fresh start? If only such things were possible. But when that’s out of reach, a fresh perspective may be the next best thing.

That’s what we’re offering today. You probably haven’t come here with full context. You may have followed a headline, a press release, or a link from your CISO. Let’s define the problem first.

As security technologists, we find ourselves:

• Outnumbered
• Under-resourced
• Overwhelmed

Outnumbered

Attackers are moving faster than ever — automated, distributed, AI-driven. Credential-based attacks remain the easiest path into an enterprise, and adversaries know it. They exploit the increasing surface area created by remote work, BYOD, third-party contractors, and AI-powered business apps. 

The browser is the new battleground — and in many environments, it’s unprotected. Without integrated, intelligent defenses at this layer, we’re leaving ourselves exposed and missing an opportunity.

Under-resourced

Modern security stacks are bloated with disconnected tools. Each one offers signals, but few offer meaningful signal correlations that scale across environments. Teams spend more time investigating threats and tuning alert rules than they do stopping threats as they emerge. 

Conditional access policies rely on multiple inputs, such as device, identity, and network security, but gaps in signal coverage and speed can slow response and strain operations. The result: Security teams are stretched thin maintaining the machine rather than improving its effectiveness.

Overwhelmed

Every login, device, and location is a potential vulnerability, and the policies that govern them must adapt in real time. But current architectures weren’t built for that. Visibility gaps, policy misalignment, and inconsistent enforcement across endpoints leave teams reacting instead of anticipating. 

Many organizations have sacrificed agility and, therefore, increased their risk exposure. The cost of that tradeoff shows up in breach reports.

A shared struggle — and a shared opportunity

The balance of power is tipped in favor of threat actors and held in check by the sheer will and determination of dedicated technologists.
 

If that’s you, you’re not alone. 

The stack is fragmented, and the attack surface keeps expanding. Systems meant to bring clarity — like traditional SIEMs — often produce only low-fidelity, delayed alerts. We rely on them because we must, but the security operations model they support is slow, reactive, and noisy. But things are starting to change.

What if identity, network, and endpoint security didn’t just interoperate but understood each other? What if your access control could account for browser posture? What if your detection and response system could enforce policy in real time instead of logging violations after the fact?

We’re heading away from stitched-together tools and toward shared context, enforcement, and outcomes. Okta and Palo Alto Networks’ new integrations aim to clear the path to unified, adaptive, identity-aware security.

Today’s security landscape: Complex, distributed, and identity-centric

Work happens in the browser — SaaS, AI tools, sensitive workflows, OAuth permissions — whether work starts there or not, it passes through the browser. It’s where users authenticate, where sessions initiate, and where data flows. That makes the browser a critical enforcement point.

But security hasn’t always kept pace. Traditional posture checks depend on VPNs, MDM, or full OS visibility — all of which fall short in a BYOD, contractor-heavy, AI-powered world. The browser is a new control point for enforcing enterprise policy.

Palo Alto Networks saw this early, extending its capabilities from the network and endpoint into the browser with their Prisma Access Browser offering. 

Unlike legacy secure browser technology or clunky virtual desktops, Prisma Access Browser runs locally and feels just like Chrome. Behind the scenes, it isolates sessions, applies enterprise-grade DLP and threat prevention, and can route traffic through Palo Alto Networks’ full SASE infrastructure.

That means real policy enforcement, even on unmanaged devices, with full visibility and inline protections baked in. And because it’s wired into the broader Palo Alto Networks ecosystem — including Unit 42 threat intelligence — you’re not trusting a standalone browser. You’re tapping into a security platform trusted by over 70,000 organizations.

Okta recognized the opportunity as well, evolving Adaptive MFA to ingest broader context — including signals from browser posture and device trust.

That’s why this integration is so important: Okta and Palo Alto Networks have partnered to enable conditional access decisions based on posture signals from Prisma Access Browser, ensuring that SSO applications are accessed only through secure, verified browser sessions. This integration creates a strong, mutual authorization flow, where Okta evaluates signals from Prisma Access Browser to determine whether access should be granted based on enterprise-defined policies.

In effect, Okta enforces browser and device posture on behalf of downstream applications. SaaS providers don’t have to build those controls themselves, and SASE configurations — like IP restrictions — don’t have to carry the burden of representing device trust alone.

As enterprises rush to adopt AI tooling, that enforcement boundary becomes critical. Sensitive data lives in prompts, plugin flows, and app sessions. Controlling access at the browser — and enforcing it through identity — is how we secure AI use without slowing innovation.

From logs to action: Identity meets the modern SOC

Security teams have long relied on SIEMs to piece together the story after the fact. Endless logs and constant noise — all in the name of visibility. And while visibility still matters, it’s not enough.

We don’t need more logs. We need shared context. We need shared action.

That’s why we’re particularly excited about our second integration — connecting Identity Threat Protection with Okta AI to Cloud Identity Engine using the standards-based Shared Signals Framework (SSF). This isn’t about sending more events into a black box. It’s about making identity intelligence operational in real time.

The Cloud Identity Engine consistently enforces user authentication and provides real-time access across the Palo Alto Networks Platform. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XSIAM and XDR provide the right level of security based on a user’s risk level.  

Cortex isn’t your legacy SIEM. It’s a modern SOC platform — folding SIEM, SOAR, XDR, UEBA, and threat intel into a single system that’s built to reason, decide, and act. AI isn’t bolted on — it’s foundational. Signals are correlated across the entire attack surface and prioritized in milliseconds. And now, with identity signals from Okta flowing in — and enforcement logic flowing back — that intelligence becomes reflexive.

Okta has received signals from Palo Alto Networks’ Cloud Identity Engine and Cortex XDR since May, bringing security context to our Identity Threat Protection platform. But this July, that signal becomes bidirectional. With our new integration, Okta will transmit risk signals back into Cloud Identity Engine, closing the loop and unlocking end-to-end, identity-informed response inside the SOC.

It’s not just interoperability — it’s amplification. Identity Threat Protection, powered by Okta AI, now connects seamlessly with Palo Alto Networks’ Precision AI. That means identity risk signals tuned on authentication patterns, device context, and user behavior are now part of the SOC’s detection and remediation fabric. We’re not just fighting AI-augmented threats — we’re fighting AI with AI.

And here’s the strategy behind it: Today, we’re starting with an integrated SOC platform with built-in SIEM and SOAR as the first place to receive SSF signals — because it’s where the highest-fidelity observations converge. It’s bootstrapping reality. In time, more SaaS platforms will join the SSF network directly. But right now, one of the clearest signals rises through the SOC, and Cortex is the most capable partner we could have.

Because let’s be honest: if you’re going to depend on someone to watch your back, it should be the one with the broadest visibility, the fastest reflexes, and the deepest bench of threat intelligence. That’s Cortex. And it’s why this integration is an operational necessity.

Okta and Palo Alto Networks share signals and coordinate decisions. And that’s how we move from passive detection to active defense: with identity as a first-class signal in every response.

Before, during, and after — Securing the full identity lifecycle

To bring these integrations to life, let’s walk through a real-world access flow that demonstrates how Okta and Palo Alto Networks secure the complete identity lifecycle — from the first handshake to the final enforcement.

The scenario

A contract developer needs access to an internal AI tooling dashboard. She uses a personally owned device, or perhaps a device managed by the company she works for, and signs in using Okta FastPass, a phishing-resistant, passwordless authentication method. While she accesses the app through Prisma Access Browser, she also uses an adjacent third-party productivity tool — one that initiates its own OAuth flow through the browser and then issues access tokens independently.

While the enterprise knows that the initial authentication is secure, the client environment that consumes that token may not be hardened. To manage this reality, the admin team has configured Cortex XSIAM to monitor session behavior from these clients, using telemetry ingested from the application and broader endpoint activity.

Before authentication

Next, the user launches Prisma Access Browser, which runs locally and applies policy-based session controls — DLP, isolation, posture validation — all behind a familiar browsing experience. The browser shares posture context with Okta, which evaluates that signal as part of a conditional access policy, confirming the device is in a trusted state. Because the conditions are met, access proceeds without friction.

During authentication 

The user authenticates using Okta FastPass, tied to device-bound credentials and biometric verification. This eliminates credential-based threats and ensures the session is rooted in trust. Okta AI evaluates contextual signals — device state, geolocation, time of day, behavioral baselines — and returns a low-risk score, granting the user seamless access.

After authentication 

Shortly after login, the user initiates an OAuth flow from a third-party productivity tool — a workflow that has been explicitly configured to launch from within Prisma Access Browser, as required by Okta’s conditional access policy. This ensures two things: The session originates from a hardened environment, and Cortex XSIAM gains visibility into the full authentication flow, including application behavior patterns that may not surface in identity logs alone.

Despite passing a phishing-resistant authentication, the resulting client session begins exhibiting abnormal activity: repeated API queries, irregular data access patterns, and signs of possible token misuse from a post-authentication breach.

This is where Cortex Precision AI begins to correlate behavior across the environment, drawing from native ingestion of Okta authentication logs, endpoint telemetry, and application signals.

While the user’s authentication was trusted, the behavior that followed wasn't. In modern defense, that distinction matters.

Through SSF, Cortex transmits a high-confidence risk signal to Okta. Identity Threat Protection immediately revokes the session, enforces re-authentication, and halts downstream access via Universal Logout.

Simultaneously, Cortex triggers an automated investigation and isolates the affected device — reducing time to containment and minimizing impact.

Trust — but verify, and verify again.
 

Beyond the walkthrough: Replacing the Rube Goldberg Machine

In many organizations, the equivalent of what we just described would require a more complex (and often disconnected) stack. For example:

• A hardened VDI environment
• An identity-aware network layer
• Separate DLP tooling
• manual policy handoffs between the endpoint and SOC
• An authentication provider enforcing access policy based on extremely limited context

It’s how things were done for years — and in some cases, still are. But complexity isn’t always synonymous with assurance.

Even well-meaning architecture can leave gaps. In fact, we’ve seen firsthand that a fully managed, centralized desktop infrastructure can still become an attack vector, especially when trust is placed in the environment itself rather than the identity moving through it.

That’s what makes this new model different: Instead of stacking point solutions in the hope that context survives the handoff, we’re bringing together platforms that understand each other and act in real time: a secure browser, an identity-native policy engine, and a SOC that listens and responds to identity signals.

Not a workaround. Not a patchwork. Defense that makes sense.

Looking ahead: A smarter, shared approach to defense

This partnership is about more than integrations. It’s about rewriting the way security systems communicate — in real time, across layers, and across vendors. With Okta and Palo Alto Networks, we’re building a more adaptive architecture with:

• Conditional access that understands browser context
• Detection and response that treat identity as a first-class signal
• AI that doesn’t just analyze — it acts

But more than anything, this launch marks progress toward a future where defense is collaborative by default.

We built Identity Threat Protection with Okta AI on open standards like SSF and Continuous Access Evaluation (CAEP), so this model isn’t locked to one stack. Whether you’re running Cortex or another system entirely, these signals are built to flow freely and inform the platforms you rely on, not constrain them.

And it’s only the beginning: The moment we start treating identity as a shared source of truth — for access but also for risk and response — we unlock a security model that’s dynamic, adaptive, and built to scale with how people work today.

That’s the future we’re building toward, and today’s integrations bring us one step closer. Because the most resilient organizations won’t be the ones with the most rigid controls — they’ll be the ones with the most intelligent connections.

Learn more about the integration and register for the webinar.