We’ve all heard the stat by now: More than 80% of all data breaches stem from identity-based attacks. If you’ve already rolled out SSO and MFA, that stat might seem like old news. However, it's actually a warning. It proves there’s a dangerous gap in your defenses: the gaps between your security tools.
Today’s identity attacks don’t stop at login. They exploit the gaps between your tools, moving laterally with dormant accounts, extra privileges, and stolen sessions. When every tool is a silo, you can't see the full picture. You can't connect a strange login here with a compromised server over there. And if you do manage to spot a threat? Good luck fixing it quickly. It becomes a frantic, manual process to find and shut down access, long after the damage is done.
This isn't a problem you can solve by buying another point solution. To truly secure identity, you need to change the architecture. You need an identity security fabric.
What is an identity security fabric?
An identity security fabric is Okta's perspective on a modern approach to identity architecture. It’s not a single product you can buy, but rather a blueprint for building a resilient and unified security posture. It weaves together all of your identity tools and systems into a single, cohesive layer of security.
By building an identity security fabric, organizations can centralize visibility, orchestrate actions across their entire tech stack, and automate responses to prevent, detect, and stop threats in real time—across every identity, system, and environment.
This fabric is built on three foundational layers:
- Secure identity products: Enabling end-to-end protection
A strong fabric requires a comprehensive set of tools that protect identities before, during, and after authentication. Effective identity security extends far beyond the point of login. It requires:
- Proactive security before authentication: Tools like Okta Identity Governance to enforce least privilege, Privileged Access Management to control access to critical infrastructure, and Identity Security Posture Management to find and fix misconfigurations before they’re exploited.
- Strong access control during authentication: A foundation of Access Management, including phishing-resistant Adaptive MFA, to help ensure the right users get secure access to the right resources.
- Continuous monitoring after authentication: Real-time Identity Threat Protection that can detect risky behavior after login and respond automatically to contain threats before they escalate.
Secure identity orchestration: Making everything work together
Having the right tools is only part of the solution. A true fabric uses orchestration to connect all parts of identity security and automate outcomes. This is the connective tissue that standardizes threat response and centralized management. When a threat is detected by one part of your system, orchestration helps ensure an automated, enterprise-wide response is triggered immediately — like revoking a user's active sessions everywhere or requiring them to re-authenticate.
Secure identity integrations: Covering your entire tech stack
The fabric must be inclusive and extensive to be effective. It needs deep integrations to bring every identity — from employees and partners to customers and AI agents — into a unified security model. It must also connect to every resource, whether it’s a modern cloud application, an on-premises server, or an API. This is how you help eliminate dangerous identity silos and gain the full visibility needed to share risk signals across your entire security ecosystem.
The Okta Platform: Your identity security fabric in practice
The Okta Platform is designed to bring your identity security fabric to life. We provide the three critical layers you need to build your own identity security fabric today.
Secure identity products: Okta provides a complete set of market-leading products to manage the full spectrum of identity security. From Okta Identity Governance and Okta Privileged Access to Adaptive MFA and Identity Threat Protection, we help you secure identity end-to-end.
Secure identity orchestration: You can connect all parts of your identity security and automate threat responses across your entire stack. This is the orchestration engine that makes the fabric actionable.
Secure identity integrations: Our platform is built on a foundation of deep integrations that connect every identity to every resource. This provides the unified control and visibility essential for a strong defense.
Weaving the identity security fabric
What does the identity security fabric look like in action?
Okta builds and connects identity security use cases — our threads — to solve the most critical challenges facing security teams. By weaving these threads into a cohesive fabric, Okta delivers end-to-end, orchestrated identity security before, during, and after authentication for every identity — human, non-human, and AI agents — across all environments.
The result? Broader, deeper security outcomes and greater efficiency.
Secure AI agents: As AI agents become a part of the workforce, they introduce new security challenges. Okta’s solution provides visibility to discover and identify risky agents, centralized tools to manage and control their access, and automated governance to enforce security policies and manage their lifecycles.
Protect non-human identities: Modern applications and automation rely on non-human identities like service accounts. Okta helps ensure these identities are managed, secured, and governed just like human users, preventing a critical and often-overlooked attack vector.
Secure hybrid and on-premises environments: Many organizations still rely on on-prem systems. The Okta Platform seamlessly integrates with and extends identity governance, threat protection, migration, and access capabilities to legacy systems and hybrid environments. It helps proactively find and fix Active Directory vulnerabilities, provide resilient access even when offline, and automatically respond to threats.
Enable security-driven governance: Identity governance is often seen as a compliance exercise. Okta transforms it into an active security function, enabling you to enforce least privilege and conduct risk-oriented access certifications that proactively reduce your attack surface.
- Secure workforce onboarding: The first point of contact is often the most critical. Okta automates and helps secure the user onboarding process from the moment an Okta account is created, using secure, phishing-resistant methods to ensure that new workers have secure access from day one.
The era of treating identity as a check-box tool is over. In today’s world, identity is security. It's time to move beyond fragmented solutions and build a true identity security fabric. This is the path to reducing operational complexity, enhancing visibility, and defending against the threats of today and tomorrow.
Learn how to bring your identity security fabric to life: Explore the Okta Platform
