IBM Security Verify Access vs Okta Workforce Identity comparison

IBM and Okta are both solutions in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category. IBM is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.0, while Okta is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4. IBM holds a 1.7% mindshare in IAMS, compared to Okta’s 13.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Okta users who would recommend it.

IBM Security Verify Access

Read 7 IBM Security Verify Access reviews

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476 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Okta Workforce Identity

Read 65 Okta Workforce Identity reviews

4,379 Views
3,565 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

IBM Security Verify Access

Okta Workforce Identity

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Okta Workforce Identity and IBM Security Verify Access compete in the field of enterprise access management solutions. Okta Workforce Identity often has the upper hand in user reviews for pricing and support, while IBM Security Verify Access stands out for its comprehensive feature set, justifying its higher cost.

Features: Okta Workforce Identity is recognized for its seamless integration capabilities, easy-to-use access management, and robust security measures. IBM Security Verify Access is known for its advanced security policies, detailed auditing, and comprehensive access control features.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest Okta Workforce Identity could enhance its reporting functionalities and offer more customization options. IBM Security Verify Access is noted for needing a more intuitive setup process and improved technical support documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Okta Workforce Identity is generally straightforward to deploy with responsive customer service. IBM Security Verify Access has a steeper learning curve and users report varied experiences with customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Okta Workforce Identity offers competitive pricing with a good return on investment, appealing particularly to small and medium-sized enterprises. IBM Security Verify Access, though more expensive, provides value through its extensive features, making it worthwhile for larger enterprises despite higher setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Security Verify Access vs. Okta Workforce Identity Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Security Verify Access vs. Okta Workforce Identity

February 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security Verify Access

Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)

14th

Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

19th

Ranking in Access Management

13th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Identity Management (IM) (25th)

Okta Workforce Identity

Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)

3rd

Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

2nd

Ranking in Access Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Authentication Systems (5th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (6th), ZTNA as a Service (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM Security Verify Access is 1.7%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 13.3%, up from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

Featured Reviews

AsifIqbal

Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Has good scalability and is stable with no glitches; has a multi-factor authentication feature

What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain.

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Tor Nordhagen

Executive Director at Semaphore

Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced

The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"From the integration point of view, it supports SAML, OIDC, and OAuth. For legacy applications that don't have support for SAML and other new protocols, it provides single sign-on access to end-users. From the integration compatibility point of view, it is highly capable."

"I have found this solution to be really practical and when a user wants to log in, it is effortless and runs smooth."

"It's a good solution for identification and access management."

"The solution has powerful authentification and authorization. It offers a good way to increase security."

"The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via email or SMS. This ensures secure access to your accounts by providing multiple authentication options."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Security Access Manager, at least for my company, is multi-factor authentication. That's the only feature my company is using. The solution works well and has no glitches. IBM Security Access Manager is a very good solution, so my company is still using it."

"Its stability and UI are most valuable."

"It has a wide range of MFA options. I prefer "Okta Verify" out of them all."

"The ease of deployment, ease of use, and speed of delivery is what I like about Okta Workforce Identity. It is very easy to use. For a lot of software, you need to be trained extensively and have a very technical background. Okta Workforce Identity is quite simple. You can integrate any software into Okta. They've got a network of 7,000 applications that easily integrate into it."

"The initial setup is easy."

"The support for YubiKey is really good because you don't actually have to type in your username and password."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the integration with external websites one-factor authentication."

"The tool helps improve our security and productivity."

"The most valuable features are ease of operation and visibility."

"One of the most beneficial features of the solution is the user provisioning and the de-provisioning feature."

More Okta Workforce Identity pros

Cons

"The solution could be classified as a hilt system. There are a lot of resources being used and it is suitable for very large enterprises or the public sector."

"The user interface needs to be simplified, it's complex and not user-friendly."

"Configuration could be simplified for the end-user."

"They can improve the single sign-on configuration for OIDC and OAuth. That is not very mature in this product, and they can improve it in this particular area. OIDC is a third-party integration that we do with the cloud platforms, and OAuth is an authorization mechanism for allowing a user having an account with Google or any other provider to access an application. Organizations these days are looking for just-in-time provisioning use cases, but IBM Security Access Manager is not very mature for such use cases. There are only a few applications that can be integrated, and this is where this product is lagging. However, in terms of configuration and single sign-on mechanisms, it is a great product."

"The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial."

"There are a lot of areas that can be improved, but the main area is the lack of customization. You cannot easily customize anything in the product. It is not easy to tweak the functionality. It is challenging to change the out-of-the-box functionality."

"What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain."

"The pricing could be improved."

"The solution should have greater on-premises availability, not just cloud and more package customization in its processing."

"The integration with third-party tools needs to be improved."

"A room for improvement in Okta Workforce Identity is its price. It could be cheaper. The biggest benefit of the solution is that everything works securely without extra steps, so you're saving on your workforce's time and effort because your applications work smoothly and securely, but you'd need to pay some amount of money for that. Another area that could be improved, though not necessarily regarding Okta Workforce Identity, is the SSO applications because so many of the source applications charge extra money to put the SSO to work, which means you have to buy a more expensive license. Nowadays, SSO is a mainstream functionality and it should be out-of-the-box in those applications because it's so easy to set up."

"RESTful Web Service calls and their response seem a bit slow."

"The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface."

"The stability could be better."

"Okta Workforce Identity could improve the way passwords are reset and how it interfaces with Microsoft."

More Okta Workforce Identity cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not expensive. It depends on the number of users."

"It costs about 300K AED for a year. Its pricing is a bit on the higher end, but in comparison to other products in the market, its price is still better. There are lots of other products that are very costly."

"The license and costs depend on the amount range of users you have. For just approximately 2,000 users, the price is practical and fair. However, when you have 20,000 users, it starts to become really expensive, and the discount per user is not attractive enough to go ahead and purchase."

"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."

"The price of the solution is good."

"The solution is not the cheapest but not the most expensive. They are in the middle rating."

"The product's price is high. For each feature, a certain payment is required."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."

"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is competitively priced. We pay annually for the use of the solution."

"Though I don't know about the licensing model of the product, I wouldn't be surprised if Okta offers a per user license subscription model."

More Okta Workforce Identity pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Insurance Company

17%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Security Access Manager?

The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via ema...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Security Access Manager?

The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering IBM Security Access Manager?

I rate the product an eight out of ten.

See all answers

What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?

Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?

Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?

Okta should have at least a local presense for countries that align with or comply with GDPR or data sovereignty, so there are no compliance or audit questions. There are integration issues with Of...

See all answers

Comparisons

Oracle Access Manager vs IBM Security Verify Access

Compared 25% of the time

Ping Identity Platform vs IBM Security Verify Access

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs IBM Security Verify Access

Compared 10% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs IBM Security Verify Access

Compared 9% of the time

SailPoint Identity Security Cloud vs IBM Security Verify Access

Compared 5% of the time

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Microsoft Entra ID vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 39% of the time

SailPoint Identity Security Cloud vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 11% of the time

Google Cloud Identity vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 10% of the time

Saviynt vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Customer Data Cloud vs Okta Workforce Identity

Compared 1% of the time

More Okta Workforce Identity Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)

March 2025

Download IBM Security Verify Access product report

Buyer's Guide

Okta Workforce Identity

March 2025

Download Okta Workforce Identity product report

Also Known As

IBM Security Verify Access (SVA), IBM Security Access Manager, ISAM

No data available

Overview

IBM Security Verify Access is a complete authorization and network security policy management solution. It provides end-to-end protection of resources over geographically dispersed intranets and extranets.Provides a wide range of built-in authenticators and supports external authenticators.Provides permit and deny decisions for protected resources requests in the secure domain through the authorization API.Manages secure access to private internal network-based resources by using the public Internet's broad connectivity and ease of use with a corporate firewall system.

IBM

Okta Workforce Identity is a comprehensive identity and access management (IAM) solution designed to enhance security and streamline user experiences for businesses of all sizes. As a cloud-based platform, it offers a suite of tools that simplify user authentication, authorization, and management across a variety of applications and services.

Core Features

Single Sign-On (SSO): Enables users to access multiple applications with a single set of credentials, enhancing convenience and reducing password fatigue.
Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Provides robust security by requiring additional verification factors, which can adapt based on the user's location, device, and behavior.
Lifecycle Management: Automates user account creation, updating, and deactivation, ensuring access rights are current and compliant with company policies.
Universal Directory: A centralized directory service that supports user and group management across various applications, simplifying administrative tasks.
API Access Management: Safeguards APIs by implementing policies that control how and when they can be accessed, which is crucial for protecting sensitive data.

PeerSpot users often praise Okta Workforce Identity for its ease of use and robust security features. IT professionals appreciate the streamlined integration with numerous applications and the flexibility in configuring access policies. Business executives value the enhanced security posture and the ability to enforce compliance across their digital assets.

For IT professionals, Okta Workforce Identity offers a scalable and efficient solution to manage user identities and access rights. The ability to automate routine tasks like user provisioning and deactivation significantly reduces administrative overhead, allowing IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives. Furthermore, the platform's comprehensive reporting capabilities aid in monitoring and auditing access, which is critical for maintaining security and compliance.

Business executives will find that Okta Workforce Identity aligns with broader organizational goals of operational efficiency and risk management. Its intuitive user experience minimizes disruptions to workforce productivity, while advanced security features like adaptive MFA help mitigate the risk of data breaches. The platform's cloud-based nature ensures scalability and agility, enabling businesses to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and workforce dynamics.

Okta Workforce Identity stands out as a versatile and secure IAM solution, adept at meeting the complex needs of modern enterprises. Its combination of user-friendly features and robust security measures makes it a top choice for organizations aiming to streamline their identity management processes while bolstering their cybersecurity defenses.

Okta

Sample Customers

POST Luxembourg

FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Security Verify Access vs. Okta Workforce Identity

February 2025

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