Businesses at Work 2025

*Businesses at Work 2025*

A decade of data: Security emerges as a top priority

Ten years of insights, one clear trend: Security tools are a top priority for businesses. Explore Okta’s latest Businesses at Work report.Contents

10-year
retrospective

The world
of apps

Authentication and security

Conclusion

Methodology

Thank you for reading

Businesses at Work 2025

Businesses at Work 2025 → Introduction

Business in balance

Welcome to a decade of Businesses at Work.

And what a decade it’s been. The business landscape has evolved dramatically, bringing us smartphone saturation, global remote work, a cloud-based lifestyle, and the rise of professional cybercrime. And we’ve been right there all along, tracking the world’s workforces as they invest in new technologies and expand their use of existing ones to keep up with the changing times. We shed light on those changes in a special section that recaps the first 10 years of Businesses at Work.

Against a backdrop of change, two constants have characterized this wild ride: security and collaboration. Cloud storage, video conferencing, and ever-more-powerful collaboration apps have made it easy for globally distributed teams to work together. But securing this expanding perimeter while keeping the experience smooth for users is an ongoing challenge for today’s global businesses.

Todd McKinnon
CEO and founder

Introduction → Business in balance

Highlights from our data this year include

Security and collaboration apps make up 60% of our most popular apps

Emerging from a stagnation streak, the average number of apps per customer hits 101

Detected threats are up across the board, with the most-attacked industry experiencing a tenfold increase

Organizations are adopting higher-assurance authentication factors and biometrics

For the Okta Businesses at Work 2025 report, we analyzed anonymized data from Okta’s global customers and the Okta Integration Network, which includes more than 7,000 ready-to-use, pre-built integrations that help organizations evolve their tech stacks. We’ve sliced and diced this dataset by region, industry, and company size to bring you deep insights into the software being deployed today. (Detailed methodology available here.)

Now, let’s jump in.

Businesses at Work 2025 → Introduction

What’s inside this year’s report

10-year retrospective

The world of apps

Categories at work
Fastest-growing apps
The best tools for the job
Workflows

Authentication and security

Security categories and factors
Passwordless authentication with FastPass
Measuring cyberthreat growth

Conclusion

Methodology

Summary of key findings

A continuous swarm of cyberattacks, fueled by global criminal enterprises and rogue state-backed actors and supported by AI, have become today’s sobering reality. Security apps dominate the fastest-growing apps again after several years, during which collaboration apps took the upper hand. In fact, our three fastest-growing apps this year are security-focused. But collaboration tools are still mission-critical, a signal that companies are seeking to balance security and productivity.

Here’s a high-level look at this year’s big reveals.

10-year retrospective: We mined a decade’s worth of Businesses at Work data to reveal key macrotrends. Companies have spent the past decade steadily trading in their low-assurance authentication factors for higher-assurance ones. Four of the top six most popular apps in our original 2015 report are still flying high, but there’s been significant change further down this 15-app list.
See the 10-year retrospective →

Categories at work: App adoption has slowed across the board, with categories like video conferencing and networking and infrastructure down across many industries. But design software is still all the rage across industries and countries.
See all categories-at-work data →

Introduction → Summary of key findings

Fastest-growing apps: This year’s top three fastest-growing apps are all security-focused, and multiple industries are leaning toward security tools. Meanwhile, one developer tool, in particular, is making huge gains among companies of all sizes.
See all app-popularity data →

Best tools for the job: Pop the champagne: for the first time ever, the average number of apps deployed per company tops 100. And there’s a new identity security standard in development that could make it a lot easier to develop and deploy apps that are secure by design.
See all best-tools-for-the-job data →

Workflows: Companies and industries around the world are gaining efficiencies and reducing busywork by deploying automated Okta Workflows. And this year’s most-deployed Workflows connector is a familiar face.
See all Workflows data →

Introduction → Summary of key findings

Security categories and factors: Data compliance tools are still on the rise; higher-assurance, phishing-resistant authentication factors are steadily replacing low-assurance ones, such as security questions and phone factors.
See all security-categories and factors data →

Passwordless authentication: The passwordless future may be closer than we think: The annual volume of FastPass authentications — Okta’s phishing-resistant, passwordless authenticator — is up 377% YoY. This solution is often backed by biometric information such as fingerprints.
See all passwordless authentication data →

Insights into detected threats: The energy, mining, oil, and gas sector is the most attacked industry, with nonprofits as a distant second. By country, the US, Germany, and Netherlands have the highest ratio of detected threats to authentications.
See all threat-detection data →

What is the OIN?

The Okta Integration Network (OIN) is an extensive catalog of pre-built integrations enterprises can use to give their workforce seamless access to best-of-breed technology. These integrations help organizations reduce risks of identity attacks and breaches with tooling that strengthens their Identity security — before, during, and after authentication.

The ever-expanding OIN today offers more than 7,000 ready-to-use integrations across multiple security-focused integration use cases, from single sign-on to bot or fraud detection.

Our vendor-neutral catalog securely connects customers to tools via integrations built according to open standards, including OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and RESTful APIs, for easy setup and maintenance. The OIN helps organizations build Identity-first security stacks so they can confidently expand their security postures.

See the full report methodology.