Okta's Oktane 2025 | Vivek Raman, Okta Personal

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Vivek Raman

Vice President and General Manager

Okta Personal

play_circle_outline Exploring Identity and Consumer Tech: Highlights from theCUBE Coverage at Okta Oktane in Las Vegas with Rebecca Knight and Jackie McGuire

play_circle_outline Vivek Raman discusses the role of Okta Personal in consumer identity.

play_circle_outline Use cases for personal identity include ID verification during application onboarding.

play_circle_outline Collaboration with governments promotes interoperability and verifies digital IDs.

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Vivek Raman, Okta Personal

Vivek Raman

Vice President and General Manager Okta Personal

Join us as theCUBE kicks off two full days of exclusive coverage at Okta Inc’s Oktane event, starting with a deep dive into Okta Personal. Vivek Raman, vice president and general manager of Okta Personal, meets with host Rebecca Knight and analyst Jackie McGuire to share why verified identity is becoming mission-critical for consumers and businesses in the age of AI. He explains how Okta is tackling fraud, deepfakes and compliance challenges with verifiable digital credentials built for security and ease of use.

The discussion unpacks selective discl... Read more

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What is Okta Personal and how should it be understood in the context of the company's offerings? add

What is Okta Personal and how does it fit into the consumer identity landscape? add

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What is Okta doing to facilitate the verification of government IDs for user onboarding in different contexts? add

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Rebecca Knight

>> Hello everyone, and welcome to theCUBE's live coverage of Okta Oktane here in Las Vegas. We are kicking off two straight days of live CUBE coverage. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my co-host, Jackie McGuire. Jackie, it is going to be fun. This is going to be a fun show.

Jackie McGuire

>> I was so excited when I heard that you and I were hosting together, because we haven't gotten to host together in a while. Identity is one of the things that I'm super focused on right now as an analyst, and Okta has a lot of fun people to interview.

Rebecca Knight

>> Indeed, this is your wheelhouse.

Jackie McGuire

>> I know.

Rebecca Knight

>> And with that, I would like to introduce our first guest of the show, Vivek Raman, VP and GM of Okta Personal. Thank you so much for coming on, Vivek, your first time on theCUBE.

Jackie McGuire

>> That's right. Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> So you are the GM of Okta Personal. Why don't you start by giving our viewers a big picture Okta Personal and how we should think about Okta Personal within the broader identity ecosystem?

>> Sure. Yeah. So Okta Personal was kind of started as trying to help Okta think about where we play in the consumer identity space and where we think consumer identity is going today is around verified identity and helping regular people prove who they are on the internet. And especially in this age of AI agents and bots and deepfakes, this is getting more and more important. And so, yeah, Okta Personal is really a product built for consumers instead of our traditional enterprise products. Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> So what are the most common use cases for personal identity?

>> Yeah, I think where we're really seeing interest and adoption is around combating fraud and verifying who a user is on the other side of the screen. So an easy example of that is you're onboarding to an application and you want to do an ID verification check. We can make that more seamless by using verifiable credentials or a mobile driver's license, for example. That'll help you do it in a way that doesn't require pictures and scanning your driver's license in the camera and all that. Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> And on the business side, I think before we started filming, we were talking about things like know your customer laws, right?

>> That's right.

Jackie McGuire

>> So I think maybe not everybody is aware that banks are actually legally required to verify you are who you say you are.

>> That's right.

Jackie McGuire

>> And if you're not and they didn't do what they were supposed to, they can be held liable, right?

>> That's right. That's right. Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> And so I know one of the things ... I actually cheated a little bit and I went to the analyst program, so I got a little bit of a sneak peek on what we were going to be talking about today. So let's talk about legacy identity. So in the personal space, and I think personal tech generally lags enterprise tech, right?

>> Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> Because individuals don't have as much to lose. So historically, how have we gone about doing this identity verification?

>> Yeah. So historically, digital identity verification has been something that you do only in rare instances online. So when I go to pay my taxes, for example, with the IRS, I have to go do a face scan and scan a physical document, passport or a driver's license. And that's kind of a one-time thing. If you're building an application that requires that, it's pretty costly, you have to involve third-parties and introduces a lot of user friction. And so where we see this new technology around verifiable credentials helping with this is making that repeatable and easy and much more frictionless for users.

Rebecca Knight

>> So you've used this phrase, selective disclosure. What does that mean and how does it let people share only what's necessary without oversharing?

>> Sure. Well, I'll give you an example. So if I want to go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of wine, which I'll probably do after this interview. Today, I hand over my driver's license, which has my full name, my home address, my photo, all that stuff where all they really need to know is am I over 21 or not. And so selective disclosure with verifiable credentials, let's use you, the user, be in control of what data you share. So in an online transaction, they can say, "All we need to know is, are you over 21, yes or no?" And that's it. And they can trust the answer to that.

Jackie McGuire

>> That's amazing. So one of the things that you wanted to talk about today is digital credentials. And I think this is a really interesting concept, because I think one of the biggest things that we're dealing with right now in the AI boom is the ability for people to, in a significantly more intricate and convincing way, convince you that they are people who they are not, be it with doctored driver's licenses, I've seen that, fake passports, even deepfakes with videos now. So how do you feel that verified digital credentials help address some of that issue?

>> Excuse me. Yeah, so the cool thing about this technology is that it's a cryptographically secure way to issue a credential to a person, have them hold it on their device, and it doesn't allow you to ... Because it's got cryptographic properties, it doesn't allow you to copy it or change it, and then it's attached to a human through biometrics on your device. So it's like I have to use the Face ID or Touch ID on my device to unlock that credential. So because of that, it's got all these great properties that make it more secure than a physical document.

Rebecca Knight

>> Can we zoom out for a second and just talk a little bit about how AI is changing the fraud game, and why exactly it's made identity fraud harder to catch?

>> Yeah. I mean, look at deepfakes, for example. It's so easy to go and create a fake video of anybody with their voice and their likeness. And so it makes it harder and harder for someone, especially in the digital space who you're just looking at a video or listening to a voice, it's really hard to detect a fake that way. Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> When we're talking about credentials, what types of credentials have been onboarded onto this digital system?

>> Yeah. The wave we're seeing, the way this is starting is with government-issued IDs first. So about I think 25 or so states in the US now have either are piloting or have already launched a mobile driver's license program. In Europe, there's a legislation coming soon to mandate a standard citizen ID that's going to be interoperable across all EU countries, and it's already adopted in a lot of Asian countries as well. And so the cool thing about this is the underlying technology is built on a few different standards, and those standards are starting to converge today. And so that's what we're excited about, it's going to make things more interoperable in the future.

Rebecca Knight

>> And so it's interesting that Europe is ahead of the US on this. Where would you say are various industries in terms of healthcare and government and finance? Which industries are leading the way and which ones are maybe lagging from your experience?

>> Yeah, I think leading the way, I've seen a lot of examples in healthcare. So for example, a traveling nurse who's visiting a hospital needs access to a piece of equipment or a certain ward. We've seen verifiable credentials, used to have a proof of professional certification on a piece of equipment, and then proof of employment. You present those two together and now you can have access right away to the right piece of equipment that you've got. So that's one area. But I'd say, again, the broadest adoption has been in government-issued IDs today and places where you need to ... Sorry, it just makes it more widespread when the government kind of issues the ID. It gives everybody access to it rather than a small group of people. Yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> And how are you collaborating with the government in terms of how you work together?

>> Yeah. So what we're doing is we're trying to advocate for these open standards that again, allow interoperability between states, between countries, and between different systems. What we're doing first at Okta is verifying or building into our products the ability to verify these government IDs. So when you onboard a user, either in a workforce context or in a customer identity context, if you're an application developer, you should be able to verify these government IDs in a seamless way to verify your users.

Jackie McGuire

>> And imagine it's also a more secure way to hold that identification verification than just keeping a photocopy of somebody's driver's license in a file somewhere forever and ever until a hacker finds it. So is that also part of the consideration and is kind of like the data life cycle management and the not holding on to data that you don't know you have that's sensitive?

>> Exactly. Yeah. You can imagine there's properties of VCs or VDCs where you can allow them to expire after a certain amount of time. And then I mentioned earlier they're protected by the biometrics on your device, so you have to do a Face ID or Touch ID or something to unlock the VC. Yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> We talk a lot about the importance of trust and building trust between companies and customers, between the government and its citizens is a really critical component of this. How do verifiable credentials change that dynamic and make trust either easier to come by or harder to build?

>> Yeah, I think two things we talked about I think really help there. One is the credential is more secure than a physical document, because it's got these biometric verification, properties, and things like that, and also selective disclosure. I think that's a big one. So I no longer have to show all my personal data to someone who just needs to know that that I'm over 21, or that I'm a resident of a certain state or whatever. So, yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> I always say that trust is the only currency that you have in security, and I think it's taken individuals a while. Again, I think consumer tech always lags enterprise tech to really understand what can happen when your credentials are out there. And I was just talking to somebody the other day about, I used to always answer the phone with like, "This is Jackie." And now I don't do that anymore because I'm always worried now that if somebody's calling me and then they get my voice ... I'm in media, my voice is-

Rebecca Knight

>> It's already out there, Jackie.

Jackie McGuire

>> I know, I know.

Rebecca Knight

>> The cat's out of the bag.

Jackie McGuire

>> But for a normal person who isn't attention-seeking and all over the internet, I think, do you feel like consumers are starting to become more aware of the potential fallout of these things getting out there?

>> Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. With every media report of fraud or identity loss or whatever, I think this is becoming more ... Consumers are becoming more and more aware of these issues.

Jackie McGuire

>> I imagine that as we continue with data leaks at this point, hundreds of millions to billions of people's information has been leaked on the internet.

>> It's out there. Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> And so without this kind of cryptographic signature on an identity, a digital identity, do you see that eventually this will be the way that you have to verify yourself to certify that?

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm assuming that all my personal data is out there already and easily accessible. So this is definitely a much more secure and trustworthy way to verify somebody in the future.

Rebecca Knight

>> So privacy laws are evolving and companies are really scrambling to keep up. How do VDCs actually help organizations stay compliant without adding more red tape?

>> Yeah. Well, the cool thing about them is it doesn't require you to store any data. It's a distributed architecture, so your VDC lives on your device as an end user, and you just present the proof to the company you're presenting it to. They don't need to store anything that they're not ... Like any extra data that they don't want to keep track of.

Jackie McGuire

>> It's almost like a public-private key relationship, right?

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah. Right.

Jackie McGuire

>> Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> That's really interesting. So over the next couple years, as you're thinking about how you build out Okta's personal business and kind of where you're going, what role do you see VDCs playing in that business?

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, we think that in the future or I think in the future, that you're going to have a bunch of different VDCs that you hold and that kind of will make your personal identity. So it'll be my government-issued ID, my driver's license, my passport, my proof of employment, maybe some professional certifications and things like that. And I'll choose what context and who I want to share it with, but that is kind of what I see as the makeup of my personal identity in the future.

Rebecca Knight

>> So you see the average person's experience almost like you're boarding a plane and you just show one-

>> Yeah. Yeah. I like to kind of equate this to tap to pay with a credit card. So 10 years ago, we used to swipe credit cards or use that machine, and then we started to tap the card. And now, I have my credit cards in Apple Pay. I just carry my phone around and I just tap my phone wherever I want. I don't even carry a wallet around anymore. And so it'll be very similar in our view that we think the future will be, your IDs will be part of your phone in a digital wallet.

Jackie McGuire

>> I use my actual credit card so seldom now that I left it somewhere a week ago and I was able to just pull up the Amex app and be like, "All right, the only three places, I actually used a physical card in the last month." It was very easy to narrow down, so I agree. I can't wait to get rid of all of the cards in my wallet. I have four IDs, right? I have my global entry ID, my driver's license, my passport. Yeah, it just seems like overkill at this point.

>> Right, right.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what's holding this back? What kind of adoption challenges are you seeing?

Jackie McGuire

>> Well, yeah, I think there's a couple things. This technology has been around for a few years now. I think there's been a lot of different standards that have been competing, and so we're kind of starting to see some convergence today, especially with Google, and Samsung, and Apple native wallets starting to converge on the same set of standards, so I think that's going to help adoption a lot. And governments have to get their act together. They're slow to move, and so I'm excited to see the rollout of mobile driver's licenses in the US and this legislation in Europe that's going to, I think, really accelerate adoption soon.

Rebecca Knight

>> Okay. So we're here at Okta Oktane 2025. What do you want to be able to say about Okta Personal when we're back next year in 2026?

Rebecca Knight

>> Next year? I want there to be a bunch of customers, Okta customers that already have integrated verifiable credential technology into their workforce onboarding and recovery flows into their customer identity flows for customer onboarding or recovery or verifying their users. And I want government agencies, if there was a state or a country representative up here that could be on stage with us talking about how great it is that now you can use your digital ID in so many places, that would be awesome. .

Rebecca Knight

>> I like the vision and I want them to just know I'm over 21 and I deserve that bottle of wine, which I'm ready for.

Jackie McGuire

>> No, I get carted all the time.

Rebecca Knight

>> She's showing off. Just humble-bragging. Vivek, a pleasure having you on theCUBE. Thank you so much for coming.

>> Thank you so much. A pleasure to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. For Jackie McGuire, stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Okta Oktane. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.