10-year
retrospective

Explore how workplace app and security
trends have changed over a decade

Businesses at Work 2025 → 10-year retrospective

A decade of Businesses at Work

What a difference a decade makes.

When we published the first Businesses at Work report in 2015, the business landscape was very different. No pandemic was in sight, daily office commutes were the norm, and generative artificial intelligence seemed to be the stuff of science fiction.

It’s been a wild decade for workplace tech. As this 10-year retrospective shows, we’ve been right there all along the way: We’ve reported on the apps and tools businesses are using, and shared the insights and trends that data reveals.

10-year retrospective → A decade of Businesses at Work

FASTEST GROWING, BY APP CATEGORY

Security tools become imperative

_Note:_{For this chart, we have combined some of our more specific app categories into broader umbrella categories, as follows:}_{Collaboration}_{(includes content collaboration, video conferencing, project management, productivity, and legal tools),}_{Developer Tools, HR}_{(also includes e-learning),}_{Design, Sales and Marketing}_{(also includes web hosting and social media),}_{Data and Analytics, Cloud Platforms, Business Operations}_{(includes ITSM and helpdesk, integrated workspace management systems, expense management, travel, office supplies, and e-signature),}_Security_{(also includes networking & infrastructure, and data compliance)}

Our fastest-growing apps ranking — a key component of Okta’s Businesses at Work reports — measures year-over-year growth in customer app and tool deployment and offers insights into new business trends. When we first introduced this ranking in 2015, the list included tools from across categories — from cloud platforms to collaboration.

Not in the rankings then? Security products. That changed in 2016 when security tools claimed two slots and never looked back. The security category has since solidified its place in the rankings as companies add new threat-thwarting tools to meet their evolving security needs.

10-year retrospective → A decade of Businesses at Work

Here are four key moments from a decade of tracking app adoption trends.

2015

Collaboration leads the way. In Businesses at Work’s inaugural year, the category representation leaned heavily toward collaboration tools, including a little upstart called Slack (then our No. 1 fastest-growing app).

2016–2017

Security apps move in. High-profile breaches put security top of mind for many businesses. Our data reflected that concern: Security tools, such as No. 1 fastest-growing app Jamf and KnowBe4, made up half of the fastest-growing apps in 2017 data — up from 20% in 2016.

2020

Remote work ramps up. Security tools (including Fortinet FortiGate and Broadcom Carbon Black) and collaboration tools (including Miro and Figma) shared the spotlight as the pandemic unfolded and businesses navigated how to protect a distributed workforce and keep productivity high.

2023–2024

Security tools are business critical. Security reclaimed the top spot, accounting for 50% of the fastest-growing apps in 2023 and 40% in 2024. This increase is unsurprising: There were more than 5,000 data breaches in 2023 and twice that many in 2024.

10-year retrospective → A decade of Businesses at Work

MOST POPULAR APPS BY NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS

Security, collaboration, and cloud platforms have soared

_Note:_{In our OIN data, the Atlassian Product Suite is a roll-up of apps that includes Confluence, Jira, Trello, Bitbucket, and StatusPage, all accessed by a subscription to Atlassian Access.}_Note:_{As of the Okta Businesses at Work 2025 report, Palo Alto Networks products GlobalProtect and Prisma Access are rolled up together because they are both accessed by some companies via the Palo Alto Networks Cloud Identity Engine.}

This year, security and collaboration tools make up a whopping 60% of the most popular apps list (which ranks apps based on the number of customers deploying them).

It wasn’t always this way. While collaboration has been a constant presence since the start, security didn’t make it to our apps honor roll until 2020.

10-year retrospective → A decade of Businesses at Work

Ten years at the top: Google Workspace (first known as Google Apps), Microsoft 365 (then Office 365), and Salesforce were riding high in the inaugural 2015 most popular apps list. They’ve stayed in the top five ever since.

Collaboration stays strong: Tools supporting collaboration (think video conferencing, e-signatures, messaging, and design and content collaboration) currently make up 40% of our most popular apps. The list has shifted over the years: For example, GoTo Meeting, 2015’s most popular web conferencing app (No. 15 overall), was eventually displaced by Zoom (now No. 5).

Security gains ground: Today, 20% of the top-ranked apps are security focused. These tools joined the most popular apps list for the first time in 2020 with KnowBe4. Jamf entered in 2022. Palo Alto Networks followed suit in 2024.

Developer tools join the rankings: New entrants over the years include developer tools: Jira first led Atlassian into the top ranks in 2016. GitHub joined in 2019 at No. 13, moving up in the ranks ever since.

Categories no longer on the list: Some categories have been squeezed out as businesses shifted their focus to security and collaboration. These include cloud file sharing, social media apps, expense management tools, HR apps, web hosting, and stand-alone email apps, all featured on our 2015 list.

These apps have lasting appeal: On the other hand, some familiar faces remain very much on the list: Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Docusign, and Zendesk, to name a few.

10-year retrospective → A decade of Businesses at Work

MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

Stronger factors finally kick weaker factors to the curb

Security breaches have become all too common: In just the first half of 2024, data compromises impacted a record 1.07 billion victims, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s H1 Data Breach Analysis.

And while multi-factor authentication (MFA) has helped harden defenses, not all factors offer equal protection. With stolen credentials (logins and passwords) now the initial action in 24% of security breaches, companies are advised to swap weak factors for strong MFA.

10-year retrospective → A decade of Businesses at Work

The good news: In the 10 years since our inaugural Okta Businesses at Work report, the popularity of weaker factors, such as security questions, has dwindled. Stronger factors, such as Okta Verify, security keys, and biometrics, have increasingly taken their place. (Learn more about factor types and assurance levels.)

Factors have changed: Low-assurance factors ranked high in 2015, with security questions at the top of the list and SMS ranking second. Flash forward to 2024: Security questions have slipped to 10th, and SMS has fallen to fourth.

Okta Verify climbs the ladder: Over the past 10 years, higher-assurance factors Okta Verify and Okta Verify with Push have climbed to the top of the ranks. High-assurance Okta FastPass, which made its Top 10 debut in 2023, today ranks fifth in popularity.

Security keys and biometrics are on the rise: High-assurance factor WebAuthn (FIDO2) officially became a W3C standard in 2019, bursting onto our factor radar at the end of that year. Today, this passwordless authentication factor ranks sixth on our list. And we welcome YubiKey OTP to the top 10.

Email is still favored: Email, another low-assurance factor, first crept onto the Top 10 list of most popular authentication factors in 2020. It ranks No. 7 this year.