4 ms·

what I don’t get is, if support can’t do anything but “reset” which doesn’t expose the ability to gain access… how is support helping users? If a user can acces

what I don’t get is, if support can’t do anything but “reset” which doesn’t expose the ability to gain access… how is support helping users? If a user can access their email, then they can reset themselves — surely? The idea that support can just trigger a reset email makes little sense. Perhaps Okta has some complex mechanisms that I am not aware of, but if this was any system I’ve ever worked on, an employee could take over an account if they so desired.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mdoms 5y ago
You should do a stint in support. You'd be amazed how many people would rather interact with support than click the Forgot Password link.
- phphphphp 5y ago
  As much as I’d like to forget, I’ve done a lot of support and much of that was authentication issues. I can certainly imagine in a corporate environment that some contingent of users would prefer to be hand-held through the reset request process, but all of them? My expectation (and experience of other similar systems) was that Okta would not allow password resets by anyone but the organization administrators. However, that doesn’t appear to match up with what has been disclosed here.
  - zerkten 5y ago
    It's easy to find a large segment of enterprise customers where handholding password resets is the only option because of an enterprise policy which is getting misapplied. Further, these support requests are probably unlimited in support contracts raking in significant income for Okta, so it becomes the default for customers not to worry about it. Any time companies are selling a product plus enterprise offerings, it becomes much more opaque as to what the complete product is. When organizations make the on-prem to cloud jumps they frequently are trading off oversight and experience. Many tenured internal teams have been broken apart by these types of migrations because they are ultimately sold to management as cost saving endeavors. These folks would make your observation about organizations admins controlling resets, but they are gone.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mdoms 5y ago

You should do a stint in support. You'd be amazed how many people would rather interact with support than click the Forgot Password link.

phphphphp 5y ago
As much as I’d like to forget, I’ve done a lot of support and much of that was authentication issues. I can certainly imagine in a corporate environment that some contingent of users would prefer to be hand-held through the reset request process, but all of them? My expectation (and experience of other similar systems) was that Okta would not allow password resets by anyone but the organization administrators. However, that doesn’t appear to match up with what has been disclosed here.
- zerkten 5y ago
  It's easy to find a large segment of enterprise customers where handholding password resets is the only option because of an enterprise policy which is getting misapplied. Further, these support requests are probably unlimited in support contracts raking in significant income for Okta, so it becomes the default for customers not to worry about it. Any time companies are selling a product plus enterprise offerings, it becomes much more opaque as to what the complete product is. When organizations make the on-prem to cloud jumps they frequently are trading off oversight and experience. Many tenured internal teams have been broken apart by these types of migrations because they are ultimately sold to management as cost saving endeavors. These folks would make your observation about organizations admins controlling resets, but they are gone.