Identity is now the first line of defense, and attackers know it.
In the newly published 2025 Leadership Compass for Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR), KuppingerCole highlights just how rapidly identity-based attacks are growing and how essential modern ITDR capabilities have become for every organization.
This year, for the first time ever, Okta has been recognized as an Overall Leader in the ITDR market — a validation of our continued investment in securing the full identity lifecycle across human users, workloads, and the rapidly emerging category of AI agents.
Why ITDR matters now more than ever
Identity has become the primary attack surface for modern adversaries. According to KuppingerCole, more than 80% of today’s data breaches leverage compromised identities, including techniques such as brute force attacks, password spraying, session hijacking, and the abuse of misconfigured identity systems.
Organizations now must secure:
- Human workforce identities
- Consumer identities
- Non-Human Identities (NHIs) such as service accounts and API keys
- AI agents acting autonomously on behalf of humans
KuppingerCole notes that the majority of identity-related breaches now stem from compromised NHIs, making visibility and governance across all identity types a foundational requirement for modern security teams.
Okta’s ITDR Leadership: What KuppingerCole Recognized
According to KuppingerCole, Okta’s ITDR capabilities span multiple layers of the identity journey, from authentication to ongoing session monitoring to automated response. Key strengths highlighted include:
1. Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM)
Okta’s ISPM solution surfaces:
- Over-permissioned accounts
- Stale or unused entitlements
- High-value resource risks
- Misconfigurations and toxic combinations
This gives security teams a centralized view of identity health, which is essential for preventing privilege sprawl and reducing attack paths.
2. Deep coverage for NHIs, workloads, and AI agents
KuppingerCole highlights Okta’s strong focus on the governance and protection of non-human identities, a rapidly growing attack surface.
Capabilities include:
- Ownership mapping
- Policy enforcement
- Automated reviews and remediation
- AI-driven tagging to distinguish human vs. service accounts
This helps ensure visibility and control across modern infrastructures where workload identities now outnumber users by orders of magnitude.
3. Real-time detection & response with Identity Threat Protection (ITP)
Okta’s ITP solution continuously evaluates user context and identity risk before, during, and after authentication through:
- User behavior analytics
- Credential intelligence
- 60+ bot-detection signals
- Machine-learning–driven heuristics
- Continuous contextual risk scoring across sessions
This enables Okta to identify anomalies stemming from unusual IP behavior, device changes, network reputation shifts, and other threat intelligence signals. ITP then uses these detections to calculate a composite risk score, which dynamically re-assesses policies and drives automated, real-time responses (e.g., session termination, credential resets, policy updates, downstream incident workflows).
4. Flexible, automated response playbooks
Administrators can trigger automated responses such as:
- Inline MFA challenges (step-up authentication)
- Session termination via Universal Logout
- Custom action-based remediation workflows using Okta Workflows
This allows teams to shrink detection-to-response time dramatically.
5. Strong integrations across the security ecosystem
Okta’s ITDR capabilities enriches its own detections and orchestrates coordinated responses across the security stack by integrating with:
- SIEM
- SOAR
- ITSM
- Leading security vendors through the Shared Signals Framework (SSF), including CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Netskope
These integrations enhance visibility and enable automated actions, such as downstream incident workflows, across connected systems.
A modern ITDR platform for modern identity threats
KuppingerCole concludes that Okta’s expanding ITDR architecture, strong integration strategy, and modern SaaS delivery model make the platform particularly relevant for organizations looking to modernize identity detection and response across:
- Workforce IAM
- CIAM
- Workload & Service Identity
- AI Agent Identity
While the report notes that the SaaS-native architecture may not fit every data-residency requirement, Okta’s global footprint continues to expand across EMEA, APAC, and Latin America.
Why this matters for Okta customers
Being recognized as a Leader in ITDR reinforces our belief that identity must serve as both the control plane and detection surface for today’s security teams.
With Okta’s ITDR capabilities, customers can:
- Reduce MFA fatigue & credential-stuffing risk
- Detect compromised accounts earlier
- Correlate identity risk across the security stack
- Protect both human and machine identities
- Strengthen Zero Trust maturity
- Automate end-to-end threat response
As attackers increasingly target identity systems, Okta remains committed to helping organizations stay ahead through a secure, scalable, identity platform that protects all users and their sessions, irrespective of device, location, or app.
Okta’s recognition by KuppingerCole as a Leader in the 2025 ITDR Leadership Compass reflects years of investment in securing the full identity lifecycle. As identity grows more complex — especially with the rise of NHIs and AI agents — we’re proud to support customers with the visibility, intelligence, and response automation needed to defend against today’s most sophisticated threats.
