His first customer was Sina.com--the popular portal site was struggling to handle the stream of visitors crashing its servers during the Sydney Summer Olympic Games.

FORBES: Companies, People, Ideas

Already, they have dumped customer-unfriendly brands, such as AOL, an internet portal, as soon as alternatives came along.

ECONOMIST: Schumpeter

McKinnon gave an example of a customer a large pharmaceutical company that used Okta to build a web portal for its employees that also included Salesforce.com, Box and Microsoft Azure integration.

FORBES: Okta Raises $25M To Manage Identities In Large Companies

This makes sense given that the guidelines in current form are meant to apply only to data on information technology systems rather than hard-copy storage, with portal providers receiving and making use of some of the heaviest volume of customer data in China.

FORBES: China: Seeking Balance In Regulating Data Privacy