Secure identity provider Okta has introduced its own artificial intelligence (AI)-bolstered security product – with the help of a very large IT partner: Google.

It's called Okta AI, a suite of tools that the company claims empowers organizations to use AI for better user experiences and, at the same time, adds protection for them against cyberattacks. It has a set of AI capabilities that combines up-to-date AI security models with Okta’s home-developed, crowdsourced threat intelligence and identity data.

This enables real-time identity actions for security, user experience and app development, Okta SVP Harish Peri told SDxCentral during the company's Oktane conference.

"The real magic of what Okta AI offers is actually its ecosystem, and its extensibility – meaning we have integrations into more than 7,000 pieces of enterprise software, which is how we're able to do everything from single sign-ins and MFA [multifactor authentication] capabilities to much more beyond that. But that ecosystem, which we've built over the last 15 years, is actually the magic behind Okta AI," Peri said.

Okta AI is built into the company's Workforce Identity Cloud and its Customer Identity Cloud, Peri said. "Okta has robust privacy and compliance teams to ensure that we handle data ethically and in compliance with privacy regulations," Peri said.

Several Okta AI features are built on Google Vertex AI, starting with Log Investigator and Policy Recommender in Workforce Identity Cloud. The partnership combines Okta's identity platform with enterprise-ready generative AI from Google to transform identity management.

"We're using their Vertex AI model first on the Workforce side of things," Peri said. "The data that we're providing is where we're playing to our strengths. Training the model and knowing what to do with the data and removing the bad inputs and training the outputs – that's all from our expertise, ultimately. So they're giving us a role model, we give it the data, and we trade the outputs. We are doing all that identity expertise; we're turning that into a domain-specific model, basically."

Okta AI is a direct response to the need for every company to become an AI company and embrace the opportunities ahead, while protecting their organization and users against AI-powered attacks, Peri said. According to McKinsey & Co., by the end of this year, "at least 35% of organizations will utilize generative AI as part of their identity fabric functions. These organizations will substantially improve user experience and efficiency of their IAM controls," the research firm reported.

"AI is a major factor powering a 47% rise in successful phishing attacks. Playing defense isn’t enough anymore," Peri said.

"That’s the motivation behind Identity Threat Protection with Okta AI, which will enable businesses to prevent and respond to threats faster than ever before," Okta CEO and cofounder Todd McKinnon said in his address to the Oktane conference. "It empowers organizations to automate the detection and remediation of identity threats across the tech ecosystem. It extends adaptive risk evaluation from the point of authentication to any time a user is logged in and helps you quickly prevent and respond to threats."

Identity Threat Protection allows for an array of new actions, such as Universal Logout, Peri said. "For the first time in our industry, it’s possible to automatically log users out of their apps during a security issue," he said. "An attacker hijacks a session? Simple, just invalidate it."

Here's how it works: If a bad guy or a legitimate, accredited user goes into the system and does something he/she doesn't normally do, Okta AI will recognize the move as unusual and immediately shut down the user wherever he/she is logged in. And it happens in the blink of an eye, automatically. Admins are the only rectifiers of such an issue, Peri said.

"Bad actors might be getting more sophisticated, but we are using the power of AI and our ecosystem to keep you safe and a step ahead," Peri said.