Bridging the Gap Between AD and the Cloud

Active Directory (AD) has been around since 1999 when Microsoft first released it with Windows 2000 Server. Over the years it has become a key on-premises service for managing identity-based related activities. But with the rising demand for cloud services and apps, organizations have begun to realize that AD wasn’t built for a cloud-centric world and today’s use cases. Still, they want a way to leverage their investment in AD and also take advantage of the benefits of modern single sign-on (SSO) to get access to all their cloud and on-premises applications and resources through a single interface while reducing administrative overhead.

That’s why forward-thinking IT organizations look to integrate their legacy AD environment with modern SSO from Okta and the Okta Identity Cloud. Integration with Okta provides a gateway to easily and securely connect your people to any service and resource they want to use.

Integrating AD and Okta with the Okta AD agent enables you to take full advantage of modern applications, including mobile apps, SaaS apps, and on-premises apps. By adding these apps to Okta, you automatically give your AD users access to them. Okta also makes it easy to secure access to these apps through a central set of policies, adaptive multi factor authentication (AMFA), and even the option to go passwordless. By taking advantage of their Okta RADIUS agent and Okta LDAP interface, you can even extend some of Okta’s security capabilities to local network equipment, such as Wi-Fi routers, VPNs, and other network appliances.

With centralized identity access management (IAM) and a single login interface for your users to access all the apps and services they need, you significantly reduce administrative overhead, speed up app rollouts, provide users more seamless and consistent access, and strengthen your overall security posture with more modern authentication capabilities.

AD has been an integral part of your environment in the past and can continue to provide value in the future. But as you take advantage of the many benefits of modern IAM with Okta through this integration, the way you view AD’s role may change. Okta opens a gateway to easy and secure access to the growing array of modern apps and services. With their vendor neutral nature and integration network, you can connect any technology through Okta, giving you the flexibility you need to drive your business innovation and success.

Read the full article on bridging the gap between AD and Okta here, or visit www.okta.com/rethinkad to learn more about how you can benefit from an AD integration with Okta.