Creating consistency for lengthy, complex supply chains is no easy task. The on-demand manufacturing industry suffers from variable pricing driven by a data black box. Xometry is solving this problem by creating a more transparent, instant pricing solution with their AI-powered marketplace. The company connects manufacturers with the resources they need to grow their businesses and buyers with relevant services. Both sides of Xometry’s marketplace span organizations and industries — including healthcare, energy, aerospace and defense, and more.
Working so closely with highly regulated organizations with strict data protection requirements means that Xometry can’t compromise when it comes to their own security standards. “We have to ensure that the right people get the right access at the right time,” says Brendan Hamilton, vice president of IT and security. “We need to have robust and easily provable identity measures in place to demonstrate that trust.”
For years, Xometry relied on disparate, on-premises identity infrastructure, but as the company grew, they needed an identity solution that would mirror their SaaS-first growth strategy. Maintaining multiple sources of truth for identity was a time-consuming process that demanded significant internal resources. To overcome these challenges, they started a search for an identity partner that would help them automate their lifecycle management, secure access for users, and provide a single pane of glass for both management and compliance purposes. “We needed a single platform that could manage the entire employee lifecycle at Xometry,” Hamilton adds. “We chose Okta Workforce Identity because it allows us to deliver value to the organization more quickly, it's more cost effective, and we get the benefit of the Okta team’s world class security know-how.”
Future-proofing identity practices by centralizing identity management
By bringing all of Xometry’s identity management into a single platform, the company has greater context and more insight into every facet of their identity infrastructure and its 250+ applications. “Being able to utilize a single pane of glass rather than multiple siloed applications simplifies management such that we can focus our time on a better customer and employee experience,” says Tarit Mitra, senior director of cyber and information security. “It’s part of why we view Okta as one of the most fundamental security tools in our platform today.” Xometry saw the opportunity to build a comprehensive identity security fabric that would help them integrate and orchestrate all of their identity solutions in one place. With Lifecycle Management and Workflows, the company has designed a series of automated triggers that run when a new employee is onboarded.
This onboarding process that once required hours of repetitive work is now nearly instantaneous as more than 50 automated steps are executed by Workflows. This ensures immediate productivity while simultaneously establishing a secure, least-privilege foundation for every new employee from day one, with critical security controls baked into the process. “We’re saving thousands of hours per year by automating access for new employees with Workflows, and now we have the confidence it’ll be correct every time,” says Hamilton. That extends to the company’s offboarding process as well, which revokes access immediately to protect unused accounts and mitigate potential insider threats. Since these automations don’t require any input from the IT team, they’re able to turn their attention toward further improving Xometry’s security posture. In all, Xometry utilizes over 500 workflows to automate every facet of the identity lifecycle. This effectively expands the security team’s bandwidth for strategic work, without requiring additional headcount.
Another benefit of the centralized platform has included using Privileged Access to ensure least-privilege across teams. Rather than granting blanket access to applications and having to track and audit security keys, the IT team can grant users ephemeral access. This reduces the organization’s attack surface by limiting potential attack routes via lost access keys to ensure company and customer data stays secure. With a unified identity solution, the company can also use Workflows to continuously monitor access controls across the organization and revoke permissions automatically if they’re no longer needed. “We couldn’t support the business’s identity security the way we can today without Okta,” Mitra shares. “The size of our team hasn’t changed, but we’re able to do much more identity-related work by trusting it to Okta.”
Improving employee experience with modern, secure identity features
For Xometry’s employees, automating onboarding steps makes it so they can be productive from their first day on the job. “With Okta, we’re able to ensure the new hires can hit the ground running and avoid unnecessary delays in access provisioning,” says Hamilton. Delaying access not only impacts the employee experience, it also congests IT teams with support ticket requests down the line, distracting from higher value work or more complex support problems.
Once employees are up and running, they’re also secured by Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication (AMFA) which allows the team to flexibly secure accounts without overburdening users with additional steps. “Implementing MFA is the single most effective intervention to reduce the risk of account compromise, so having robust and easy-to-use multi-factor authentication options was essential for us,” Hamilton says. That added security also comes alongside a quality user experience that increases the likelihood that employees will work within security guidelines rather than trying to find workarounds that could leave their account vulnerable.
Securing authentication to meet evolving customer and compliance standards
Xometry was one of the first companies to achieve the DOD’s rigorous Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Level 2. Okta and Auth0 were critical to this achievement, as they allowed Xometry to demonstrate their compliance with a large number of the 110 required controls. A unified identity platform provides a single control pane and clear audit trails across all identities, making it easy to demonstrate proper data hygiene and directly map controls to audit criteria. “For a lot of our CMMC journey, we could go into Okta and Auth0 and show we had the control turned on,” Mitra says. For Xometry, this means they can “reinforce our role as a trusted partner for aerospace companies, defense agencies, and other organizations that depend on strict data protection.”
Auth0 now centralizes and secures external identities for Xometry’s customers and partners, streamlining security and compliance across their diverse ecosystem. “We wanted to choose the best of breed solution and leverage Auth0’s expertise and features because we understand that working with an identity expert would save us time and improve outcomes,” Hamilton shares. He also cites Auth0’s Attack Protection features, such as Brute Force Protection, as “the types of features our customers expect to help us keep their data and identities safe.”
Partnering with Okta to secure AI and unify industry identity standards
Following their new certification, Xometry has set their sights on understanding how to best secure any potential use of agentic AI. This includes managing permissions for AI agents and putting checks in place to make sure agents can only access certain datasets. “Okta has been one of the most accessible and helpful technology partners we have,” Hamilton shares. “And we keep a close eye on the Okta roadmap for features and products that could help us address new problems,” Mitra adds.
Xometry is also excited about Interoperability Profiling for Secure Identity in the Enterprise (IPSIE). “We're excited that Okta has a big hand in IPSIE and in encouraging adoption throughout the enterprise application stack,” Hamilton adds. “Having a unified framework where all these things are in place would make our lives substantially easier.”
About Customer
Xometry is an AI-powered, global marketplace that provides manufacturers the resources they need to grow their business and makes it easy for buyers to access global manufacturing capacity and create locally resilient supply chains.
