Octus is a leading provider of credit intelligence and data for the sub-investment grade market. Buy-side firms, investment banks, law firms, and other institutions depend on Octus for the news, data, and workflow tools that shape high-stakes decisions. These customers expect precision in that data, and that any data they interact with or share with Octus is secure.
Delivering on that promise means knowing exactly who has access to what, at every stage of a company's growth. "Identity is the core of security," says David Barker, SVP and head of information security. "If we're not appropriately setting up identity, we're leaving the front door wide open. Everything hinges on who has access to what."
With roughly 900 employees, plus service accounts, and 195+ applications, that's a significant management challenge. Octus onboarded nearly 300 employees in 2025 alone. "You can't do 300 manual onboardings in one year with an IT team," Barker explains. "You need a high degree of consistency and automation."
Scaling fast means scaling smart
When Octus was 300 people, identity management worked exactly as it was designed to. Authentication lived at the application layer, and the manual processes that supported it were appropriate for the company's size. But Octus was growing quickly through organic expansion and strategic acquisitions, and what worked at 300 people was not built to serve 900. Multiple acquisitions had also introduced a layer of complexity: employees operated across different email domains, and each product platform carried its own authentication framework.
Octus made a deliberate decision to get ahead of that complexity rather than let it accumulate. The goal was a unified, automated identity platform that could scale with the business, give the security and IT teams full visibility, and support the kind of enterprise-grade controls that Octus' customers expect. "If we hadn't plugged in Okta when we did, we would not have scaled as fast or as securely," says Barker. "Okta became a growth enabler, not just an IT project."
On the customer side, the calculus was similar. Clients who subscribed to more than one Octus product were managing separate credentials for each. Octus wanted a better experience for those customers, unified authentication across all products, and the ability for enterprise clients to integrate Octus into their own identity providers. The team also recognized that building and maintaining a homegrown identity system meant diverting engineering resources from the products that differentiate Octus in the market.
"By offloading the complexity of identity to Okta and Auth0, we've eliminated the 'engineering tax' that usually slows us down. We can now focus our best talent on building world-class credit intelligence products rather than managing authentication protocols," says Vishal Saxena, CTO of Octus.
Choosing a partner built for what comes next
The evaluation process was straightforward. Multiple members of Octus' identity and technology teams had worked with Okta and Auth0 in previous roles and understood exactly what enterprise-grade identity management looked like in practice. Octus was not looking for a vendor. It was looking for a platform it could trust as a long-term foundation.
"We connect Okta into everything," Barker says. "It's a foundational fabric of our company. To give a product and company that level of control over your organization is daunting, so it means a lot to be able to trust them as a mature identity partner."
The team also valued how quickly the platform could be put to work. "Okta is more intuitive than other identity platforms," says Supreet Kaur, senior director of cybersecurity. "I can assign an integration to a junior member of my team, and that's just not possible with more complicated solutions."
For customer identity, the team evaluated building a more robust in-house solution before concluding that Auth0's out-of-the-box capabilities and enterprise-grade maturity made it the better path. "Auth0's capabilities meant we didn't have to worry about maintaining infrastructure for an identity solution," says Viren Shinde, SVP and head of platform engineering. "We could invest that energy in the products our customers actually pay for."
Auth0 Actions became a key part of that decision. "We use Auth0 Actions for MFA enrollment policy, first-login password reset, and embedding product entitlements as custom claims in our tokens. That's months of orchestration code we didn't have to write, test, or maintain, and the policy lives in one place rather than scattered across services," says Michael Ireland, VP and head of application framework.
"At the end of the day, working with Okta is a no-brainer for me because our existing knowledge and their expertise mean we all make fewer mistakes," Barker adds.
One platform, complete visibility, enterprise-grade controls
With all identity data centralized in Universal Directory, Octus moved quickly to standardize on Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) across the organization. Both are foundational to Octus' SOC 2 compliance and to the trust customers place in the platform.
Connecting new applications is fast. "The Okta Integration Network (OIN) reduces the back and forth with vendors immensely. I've connected a new app in as little as three minutes," Kaur says. Today, 99% of Octus' enterprise applications are managed through Okta.
Employee provisioning is now fully automated with the help of Lifecycle Management. With Role-based Access Controls (RBAC) in place, new hires have birthright access to the tools they need from day one, triggered the moment their profile is created in the HR platform. Offboarding is just as seamless. "Offboarding is now a simple checkbox in our HR system, followed by an automated approval process to catch any potential mistakes," says Barker. "At our scale, a manual process simply isn't feasible. Okta handles it, and it gives me complete confidence that access is removed correctly every time."
That same centralized foundation gives Octus a single, authoritative record for all identity data, with robust audit trails that the security team can rely on. "If something does happen, the behavioral insights we have in Okta help us find potential identity compromises and alert us almost immediately," Barker adds. "Then we can run automated playbooks that detect and shut off access to limit the blast radius."
A seamless identity experience for every customer
While Okta manages workforce identity, Octus unified customer authentication across all its products using Auth0. Where clients previously managed separate credentials for each Octus product they used, they now have a single login that works across the full platform. That same authentication layer powers Octus' redesigned mobile app, which the team was able to bring to market faster because authentication was already solved.
Octus uses Auth0's custom database connections to delegate authentication on every login back to its own auth service, keeping the canonical user record inside Octus' systems. "That separation was deliberate," says Shinde. "Auth0 handles what it's best at: MFA, token issuance, enterprise SSO. The user record itself never leaves our control."
For enterprise SSO setup, Octus uses Auth0's Self-Service SSO to generate a secure configuration link for clients setting up their own SAML or OIDC connection. The result is a faster, more self-sufficient process for both sides. "A lot of our customers are on their own journeys to improve their security posture," says Shinde. "When they come to us with a deadline for SSO, Auth0 gives us the agility to meet those timelines and ensure we're fostering strong, long-term customer relationships."
"With the Auth0 backend, our support team handles SSO setup independently," Ireland adds. "It's faster for us and a better experience for our customers."
Migrating users to the new authentication framework was designed to be invisible. Auth0's custom database scripts verified legacy password hashes so users continued signing in with their existing credentials throughout the transition. "Migrating to Auth0 was a non-event for our users. Nobody ever had to reset a password during the cutover," Ireland says. "An invisible migration was a critical requirement and Auth0 enabled us to meet it."
An identity foundation built to scale further
Octus has built an identity infrastructure that can grow with the business, absorb future acquisitions, and meet the expectations of the most demanding enterprise customers. "Okta gives you more flexibility and really reduces stress," Kaur says. "If you're going through any merger or acquisition, you don't have to worry about everything being done day one. We know we can still work behind the scenes, and our end users won't be affected."
The team's next priority is Privileged Access Management. "Being able to offer time-bound, elevated privileges rather than persistent access gives us even more flexibility in how we manage identity," says Barker. "That tells us that Okta and Auth0 continue to make it easier and faster for Octus to build enterprise-grade, trusted services and products for all of our customers."
About Octus
Octus is a leading credit intelligence provider that delivers all the news, insights, data, and workflow tools that shape sub-investment grade credit.
