Okta's loss reached over $2 billion from its market valuation after the company admitted the cybersecurity breach incident.
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Okta's Hacking Incident
According to BeyondTrust's assessment, the hack occurred as early as October 2. The threat actors managed to breach Okta systems and obtain clients' information through stolen credentials. Okta confirmed the incident last week stating that there was a compromise on sensitive customer data.
Okta shares declined by more than 11 percent after the company disclosed that such an incident happened. Early October 23, the stock fell more and closed at 8.1 percent. Regardless of admittance, the company did not give any details beyond a set of technical identifiers.
Okta spokesperson cleared that only one percent of its customers were affected. Meanwhile, BeyondTrust revealed that it informed Okta about a breach as early as October 2. "Having received no acknowledgment from Okta of a possible breach, we persisted with escalations within Okta until October 19th, when Okta security leadership notified us that they had indeed experienced a breach and we were one of their affected customers," the organization stated.
Cause of Okta's Breach
While some might not be familiar with Okta, the company is actually a critical part of cybersecurity systems at major corporations. The company boasts over 18,000 clients such as Zoom, ServiceNow, Workday, and more.
The company is still trying to determine how the hackers got Okta credentials to infiltrate the system. The incident also almost led to a supply-chain incident among Okta's customers.
This is not the first time that Okta has been targeted by hackers. The persistent cyberattacks among various organizations are often linked to social engineering. For instance, the recent MGM and Caesars hacks targeted Okta installations using social engineering attacks.
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