Manual Chapter : Adding Okta MFA to a per-request policy

Applies To:

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BIG-IP APM

  • 16.0.1, 16.0.0
Manual Chapter

Adding Okta MFA to a per-request policy

Before you begin, the Okta site needs to be configured to enable APM policies to interact with Okta Factors API. You need to have created a per-request policy for Okta API.
For environments wanting to implement zero trust, APM lets you implement per-request policies that use Okta Multifactor Authentication (MFA) to authenticate requests at a more granular level. This example per-request policy performs a second level of authentication using Okta MFA, which must be created in a subroutine. Additional policy elements are added to make the use case work.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Access
    Profiles / Policies
    Per-Request Policies
    .
    The Per-Request Policies screen opens.
  2. In the Per-Request Policy column of the policy you created, click
    Edit
    .
    The visual policy editor opens the per-request policy in a separate window.
  3. In the policy, click
    Add New Subroutine
    , change the name to
    Okta MFA
    , and click
    Save
    .
  4. Expand the subroutine, click
    (+)
    to add a new item.
  5. Click the
    Assignment
    tab, select
    Variable Assign
    , and click
    Add Item
    .
    This step is only needed when the Logon Page agent is configured in a per-session policy as in the use case being developed here. This step is not needed if the Logon Page agent is in the per-request policy.
    1. Click
      Add new entry
      , then click
      change
      .
    2. On the left, select
      Custom Variable
      ,
      Secure
      , and type
      subsession.logon.last.username
      .
    3. On the right, select
      Session Variable
      and type
      session.logon.last.username
      .
      If, in the Logon Page agent, you enabled
      Split domain from full Username
      , then set the session variable to
      session.logon.last.logonname
      instead.
    4. Click
      Finished
      , then
      Save
      .
  6. Still in the subroutine, after Variable Assign, click
    (+)
    to add a new item.
  7. Click the
    Authentication
    tab, select
    Okta MFA
    , and click
    Add Item
    .
    1. For
      Okta Connector
      , select a previously created Okta Connector from the dropdown list.
    2. In the Customization section, you can optionally change the text and captions that will appear to users during multifactor authentication.
    3. Click
      Finished
      , then
      Save
      .
  8. Highly recommended: In the subroutine, click
    Subroutine Settings/Rename
    and set
    Subroutine Timeout
    to the maximum allowed value of 600, which is equal to 10 mins.
    If it takes the user more that two minutes to complete the Okta verification or enrollment and a subroutine timeout occurs, the per-request policy will restart.
  9. Still in the subroutine, click
    Edit Terminals
    to change the terminals:
    1. Click
      Add Terminal
      and add a terminal called
      Deny
      , make it red, and click
      Save
      .
    2. On the Fallback branch, click the terminal, select
      Deny
      , then click
      Save
      .
  10. In the main part of the policy, click
    (+)
    to add a new item.
  11. Click the
    Subroutines
    tab, select the
    Okta MFA
    subroutine you created, and click
    Add Item
    .
You created a simple per-request policy that performs Okta MFA, which is performed in the Okta MFA step-up subroutine. The per-request policy you created looks like this:
Make sure to associate the per-session policy and the per-request policy with the virtual server to protect the resources.