Okta and ServiceNow: Modernizing Public Sector Operations

Federal, state, and local agencies and educational institutions are facing a surge in targeted cyberattacks. With increasing return-to-office mandates, they face further challenges balancing security with the need to deliver frictionless experiences for users and systems, both within and beyond the premises of agencies and campuses. Public sector organizations can lean further on industry partners to help them modernize operations to improve cybersecurity, support distributed workforces and users, remain compliant with audit and policy mandates, and, ultimately, better serve the public.

To modernize operations, agencies and institutions need to transition from legacy systems to cloud-based tools. Creating collaborative, seamless, and secure work environments that not only attract and retain top talent but also comply with key audit and policy mandates is necessary.

But building this kind of robust environment that can securely support mission-critical work isn’t easy.

For one, as the public sector implements cloud-based tools that deliver modern, continuous digital services, they must also ensure the new technology works seamlessly alongside existing processes. And securing work environments both in-office and remotely has never been more challenging, with a 40% increase in cyberattacks against government and public service organizations from Q2 2023 to Q3 2023. Unfortunately, busy IT teams’ resources are too often spent completing manual work instead of implementing changes needed to focus on the high-value work that propels their missions.

Okta and ServiceNow solutions enable agencies and institutions to overcome these obstacles by providing tools that enhance security, modernize operations, comply with strategic policies, and improve service delivery to meet critical mission goals.

Together, Okta and ServiceNow help with:

• Identity and access management: A centralized Identity solution offers a complete view of users and phishing-resistant authentication to protect accounts from cyberattacks and least-privilege access. This gives users just the right access at the right time for the right purposes.

• User lifecycle and workflow automation: Advanced algorithms and customizable templates streamline onboarding and offboarding for IT teams, reducing time-consuming work, eliminating manual, repetitive tasks, and increasing productivity.

• Compliance and policy oversight: Detailed logs and refined reporting capabilities perform automated compliance checks, and policy enforcement mechanisms help reduce the risk of non-compliance.

• No-code automation: No-code/low-code automation enables IT teams to quickly launch modern services while still adhering to Zero Trust integrations.

• Risk management and monitoring: Advanced analytics and real-time reporting enable continuous visibility of all systems, improving service availability and accelerating incident response that can better protect the sensitive information of public sector organizations.

• System integration: API management and middleware tools enable seamless integration with automated data exchange to improve communication and reduce errors.

These solutions combine ServiceNow’s expertise in policy and compliance management and internal and vendor risk management with Okta’s expertise in Identity and access management, such as single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

More specifically, with a rich, bidirectional integration, Okta and ServiceNow work seamlessly together, empowering public sector organizations to modernize and automate their services to support their evolving missions with:

• Okta Integration Network (OIN)

• ServiceNow Security Incident Module

• StateRAMP Ready authorization

• FedRAMP High authorization

• Department of Defense Impact Level (IL) 4 and IL5 workloads