Ben King

Ben King
VP, Security Trust & Culture

Ben King is the Vice President for Security Trust and Culture at Okta. He leads the Field Security, Customer Assurance, Customer Audit, Security Communications and Culture teams operating across the Americas, Europe and APJ. Prior to joining Okta, Ben was in a regional cybersecurity leadership role for Symantec, and spent 11 years at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in a variety technology and cybersecurity strategy and governance roles, including as Cybersecurity lead for Europe. Ben has built a reputation for creating and leading high performing teams, having lived and worked in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Sydney.

Ben King

BYO Telephony and the future of SMS at Okta

SMS has long played an important role as a universally applicable method of verifying a user’s identity via one-time passcodes. And over the last decade, SMS and voice-based Multi-factor Authentication has prevented untold attempts to compromise user accounts. But it’s time to move on. As of August 2023, any new Okta customer choosing to authenticate users via SMS or voice must configure their own Telephony provider, just as they would any other custom IdP or custom TOTP factor. Starting...