Here's how the Okta consumer data hack was much worse than the company originally said

Okta disclosed the hack last month, saying that about 1% of its customers were affected. The real number is actually much, much higher.

Nov 29, 2023 - 23:30

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Here's how the Okta consumer data hack was much worse than the company originally said

Shares of password authenticator Okta (OKTA) - Get Free Report pared earlier losses Wednesday afternoon after a bombshell filing from the company sent the stock down more than 5% in early market trading.

The data breach that the company disclosed last month was much more widespread than Okta first thought. Okta originally said that just 1% of its customers were affected by the hack, but now the company is saying to multiply that percentage by 100.

"We have determined that the threat actor ran and downloaded a report that contained the names and email addresses of all Okta customer support system users," David Bradbury, Okta's chief security officer, said.

"All Okta Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC) and Customer Identity Solution (CIS) customers are impacted except customers in our FedRamp High and DoD IL4 environments (these environments use a separate support system NOT accessed by the threat actor)."

Okta shares were trading down 3.2% to $70.28 at last check Wednesday afternoon.

The hacker (or hackers) ran a report on Sept. 28 seeking information from numerous fields including company name, address, mobile number and other things.

But Okta says that for 99.6% of users in the report, the only information that could be gleaned was their full names and email addresses.

Based on the information accessed, Okta says that there is an increased risk of phishing and social engineering attacks directed at those users.

"Okta customers sign-in to Okta’s customer support system with the same accounts they use in their own Okta org. Many users of the customer support system are Okta administrators. It is critical that these users have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enrolled to protect not only the customer support system, but also to secure access to their Okta admin console(s)," Bradbury said.

Okta also released its third-quarter earnings results on Wednesday.

For the period ending Oct. 31, Okta earned an adjusted 48 cents per share on revenue that rose 21% year over year to $584 million.

Analysts were expecting the company to report earnings of 30 cents per share on revenue of $560.6 million.

But what's also pressuring the stock is the fact that Okta's revenue guidance for 2025 fell short of expectations.

Okta is predicting at least 10% revenue growth for fiscal 2025 to between $2.46 billion and $2.47 billion, below estimates for 15% growth.

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