Okta has announced an agreement to acquire Spera Security to broaden its identity threat detection and security posture management capabilities. According to the official announcement, this acquisition continues Okta's investment in secure identity product offerings and furthers its vision to safely use any technology.

The acquisition is anticipated to close on February 1, 2024. Spera Security builds on Okta’s existing ITDR capabilities with a focus on security posture management and attack surface management. With Spera Security, Okta is set to equip customers with richer insights and technology to elevate their identity security posture management, and quickly identify, detect, and remediate risks.

Powering modern, Zero Trust security transformation Spera Security helps organisations reduce risk and drive down fragmented enterprise IT and costs. Security and IT practitioners will be able to capitalise on: More integrations and enhanced visibility and protection: Spera Security allows customers to uncover threats and misconfigurations not only within their IdPs but also directly within their SaaS and infrastructure applications (i.e. AWS, Salesforce, GCP, GitHub).

This enhances customers’ ability to identify and break down Identity silos across the tech stack, such as partially offboarded users or non-MFA admins.  Ongoing compliance reporting and monitoring with industry-verified identity security benchmarks: Spera Security provides the ability to discover vulnerabilities across user populations and prioritise security issues based on attack vectors, industry standards and regulations. Customers can measure themselves to certain compliance standards and best practices across their different environments. This builds on our investments in Okta Identity Governance (OIG) and Okta Privileged Access (OPA) to help IT and security leaders discover potential gaps in compliance and align to industry best practices, such as SOX or NIST.  Broader ITDR capabilities with Identity posture management: Spera Security builds on Okta’s ITDR capabilities by allowing customers to better assess the security posture of their identity infrastructure as well as their apps and services.

They can use Spera Security’s tangible suggestions like identifying SSO or MFA exclusions for privileged and service accounts to improve their security posture and remediate any potential threat vectors before they become critical. With organisational attack surfaces expanding alongside the increased use of SaaS and Cloud applications, companies require broader visibility and a central place to constantly monitor for threats and exposure. Therefore, Okta intends to remain committed to equipping customers with the tools and knowledge needed in an increasingly challenging environment, alongside Spera Security amplifying its ITDR work to deliver more secure outcomes.

.