How to Backup and Restore Your Okta Tenant

Okta is a leading identity and access management (IAM) solution, trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide for managing user identities, authentication, and access across various applications and services. However, as with any critical system, it's essential to implement proper backup and recovery strategies to protect your Okta tenant and it's valuable identity data it contains.

Data loss can occur due to various reasons, including human error, system glitches, or malicious activities, and your Okta tenant contains susceptible information such as user profiles, group memberships, application assignments, and custom configurations. Losing this data could significantly disrupt access management and user productivity.

Up-to-date backups ensure you can quickly restore your identity management system to a known good state so that your business operations continue with minimal interruption.

The Flexible Solution to Okta Backups

MightyID Recovery streamlines and automates the process of backing up large-scale identity data sets with a secure, cloud-based solution for storing your Okta tenant data. And it goes beyond simple data storage, offering advanced features that make it an indispensable tool for Okta administrators and IT professionals, including:

• Continuous backups

• Real-time data protection

• Scalability for large workforces

• Compatibility with Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) data sets

Additionally, one of the major challenges in backing up Okta tenants is preserving the intricate web of entitlements and group associations. MightyID Recovery solves this concern with:

• Comprehensive backups of user entitlements across various applications

• Preservation of group memberships and hierarchies

• Restoring references in nested objects, e.g., white-listed users in a group rule or MFA policy

• Maintenance of custom attribute mappings and configurations

MightyID Recovery also offers scheduling capabilities that fit virtually any need. You can quickly and easily set up recurring full backups (e.g., weekly) to capture complete snapshots of your Okta tenant, or configure incremental backups at shorter intervals (e.g., every 6 hours) to capture recent changes. You can also schedule continuous backups for point-in-time recovery, allowing you to recover to any point in time in the past. It’s all completely customizable to align with your organization's operational patterns and requirements.

Reducing Downtime with Targeted IAM Restore Capabilities

While comprehensive backups are mission-critical, the ability to efficiently restore data is equally important. MightyID's targeted restore capabilities offer a sophisticated approach to recovery, minimizing downtime and enhancing the overall resilience of your Okta environment. It’s built around a precision-targeted restore feature that allows administrators to selectively restore specific elements of their Okta tenant without affecting the entire system. This granular approach means you can:

• Restore individual user accounts or groups

• Recover specific application configurations

• Reinstate particular fields(s), settings, or policies

By focusing on exactly what needs to be restored, you can address issues quickly and efficiently, without disrupting unaffected parts of your identity ecosystem. Even better, MightyID's targeted restore capabilities significantly reduce recovery times by eliminating the need to restore unnecessary data and allowing parallel restoration of different components.

MightyID RecoveryRestore also offers the flexibility to choose the most appropriate restore point for different components and the ability to merge restored data with current state, retaining the latest updates. Those granular capabilities minimize the risk of data loss because they preserve recent changes in unaffected areas. They also reduce the risk of introducing new errors, as full system restores can sometimes overwrite recent, valid changes.

Typical Use Cases

• User Account Recovery: Quickly restore a deleted or corrupted user account without affecting other users or system configurations.

• Application Configuration Rollback: Revert changes to a specific application's settings after an unsuccessful update or integration attempt.

• Recover from Script Errors: Recover accidentally modified group memberships resulting from errant scripts that cause numerous undesired changes.

• Policy and Rule Recovery: Restore specific authentication policies or authorization rules that may have been inadvertently altered or deleted.

• Partial Data Migration: Selectively migrate subsets of data between Okta tenants, such as when setting up a new environment or reorganizing your identity infrastructure.

• Compliance and Audit Support: Change management allows you to revert unapproved or misconfigured changes.

How to CreateCreating an Okta Tenant Backup with MightyID

Step 1: Log into the MightyID platform

• Enter your credentials and authenticate

• Ensure you have sufficient portal permissions for the tenant you want to back up

• Verify that you have configured the necessary API credentials to read the Okta tenant

Step 2: Create a new backup job

• Once logged in, locate and select the +Job button to create a new job.

• If you're modifying an existing job, find it in the list and select Edit from the menu

Step 3: Configure the backup parameters

• Verify that the destination is set to Storage (Backup Only)

• Select the elements to include in the backup.

• Note that including associations/memberships will significantly increase backup time, but are often unnecessary for CIAM use cases, or when using user fields or group rules to assign access.  

• Choose the backup type:

• For a full, one-time backup, select Full and Start Manually

• For recurring backups, proceed to the scheduling options

• For ongoing protection, set up a schedule that includes full, incremental, and continuous backups

• Select the frequency for full backups (e.g., every Sunday at 12 AM)

• Choose how often to run incremental backups (e.g., every hour).

Step 4: Run the backup job

• For scheduled backups, select Schedule to run the job according to the defined schedule.

• For immediate execution with scheduling, choose Schedule & Now to run a full backup immediately and also set up the recurring schedule

Restoring an Okta Tenant Backup with MightyID

Step 1: Log into the MightyID platform

• Enter your credentials and authenticate

• Ensure you have sufficient portal permissions for the tenant you want to restore

• Verify that you have configured the necessary API credentials to write to the target Okta tenant

• If desired, upgrade token permissions to allow writes, as opposed to creating and loading new credentials

Step 2: Select the Okta backup to restore

• From the main dashboard, locate the tenant that contains the backup you wish to restore

• Select +Restore to create a new restore job

• Choose the specific backup instance you want to restore from the available options

• Alternatively, for an existing restore configuration, find it in the list and select the Run option from the menu

Step 3: Configure the restore parameters

• Select the correct destination tenant for the restore operation

• If you have the MightyID Port option, you'll see tenants from all supported IdPs

• Choose how MightyID should handle matched objects during the restore process

• Select any additional restore options you require

• Some options may not be available for production tenant destinations

• Choose which specific object types you want to restore

Step 4: Run the restore process

• When you're satisfied with the configuration, select Run to initiate the restoration process

• Monitor the progress of the restore operation through the MightyID dashboard

• Once completed, verify the restored data in your Okta tenant to ensure all selected objects and configurations have been properly reinstated

Protect Critical Identities and Business Continuity

MightyID is the smarter solution for automating Okta backups with targeted restore capabilities, enabling organizations to efficiently safeguard their identity management systems and quickly recover from potential data loss or system issues.

‍Contact us today to learn how we can protect and optimize your organization’s identity and access management.