Okta Inc.

10/10/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/10/2024 12:39

Unlocking the power of generative AI with Identity

In a little over a year, generative AI has shapeshifted from fringe concept to must-have for many companies. According to McKinsey, 65% of organizations regularly use the technology in at least one function in 2024, a proportion that had doubled since its previous survey just 10 months prior.

It's no surprise, given AI's attractive efficiency and productivity benefits. Gartner estimates businesses could cut costs by 16% and boost productivity by a quarter within 12-18 months by investing in generative AI tools. Clearly, companies can't afford to wait to explore the potential of generative AI. But in harnessing its power, they must also control access to the huge volumes of data that these tools create, to keep sensitive information safe from unauthorized eyes.

Use cases for generative AI

Why is security such a critical challenge? Let's look at why businesses are using generative AI. The power of these tools lies in their ability to use the data in your systems to generate insights, create content, and automate admin. For instance, they can produce summaries of meetings or answer questions about company benefits. Generative AI connects a brilliant brain to your existing data to simplify tasks and drive innovation.

Generative AI leads to great transformation, no matter your business size.

  • For small businesses,it can dramatically reduce admin, for example, by automating routine tasks like invoice generation or social media posting so you can focus resources on growth-building activities.
  • For medium-sized businessesfacing growing regulatory requirements, it can help you stay compliant by analyzing data, flagging anomalies, and producing accurate reports
  • For enterprises, it empowers data-driven decision-making and faster ideation, helping you respond quickly to market demands and stay ahead of the competition

While the use cases for generative AI are abundant, they bring an equal abundance of data that needs to be secured. How do you make sure, for example, that software developers can't accidentally view confidential HR meeting notes purely because they have access to your new generative AI tools?

That's where Identity comes in. A modern, enterprise-grade Identity solution helps secure access to your organization's generative-AI-produced information so that only those with the requisite permissions can view and use it.

Secure, automated access

Identity and Access Management is the cornerstone of our connected world, ensuring that only authorized users - employees, contractors, partners, and customers - can access particular resources.

A modern Identity platform protects the sensitive information processed by generative AI tools with fine-grained, role-based access controls and automated lifecycle management. Employees may only access the data that aligns with their roles and permissions. If they change roles or leave the company, their permissions are updated accordingly, without manual intervention from IT. To further mitigate risk, Identity solutions offer adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA) as a context-sensitive additional security layer for your most important information.

Fast and scalable

Having acquired your exciting new generative AI tool, you'll want to roll it out across the business fast so you can start leveraging the benefits. However, this will quickly overwhelm IT teams that have to manually process, approve, and action every access request. Luckily, Identity makes onboarding simple and scalable.

With Identity, you can automate provisioning and enable self-service access. Users simply submit a request and wait for a short assessment based on predefined criteria.

Identity is also a powerful tool for protecting customers' personal data used by generative AI systems. It helps secure sensitive data from unauthorized access and breaches and maintains compliance with data privacy regulations.

How Okta secures your generative AI implementation

With its enterprise-grade security and any-to-any integrations, Okta allows you to start making the most of generative AI, quickly and safely.

Seamlessly connect your generative AI tools to all other systems in your company, ensuring secure, efficient access and data flows across your entire tech stack. Get workers up and running rapidly, with access only to the data and content for which they have authorization.

Leverage features like adaptive MFA and single sign-on to simplify and safeguard access to generative AI tools and data. And automate the routine Identity and& Access Management tasks that weigh down IT, freeing everyone across your business to quickly harness the power of generative AI.

Find out how Okta and AWS Amazon Q are streamlining and securing generative AI data access in the video below.