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Comprehending the Criticality of Customer Identity and Access Management

Customer identity and access management (CIAM) systems are critical in driving secure and seamless user experiences across varied digital interfaces.

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DQC Bureau
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Comprehending the Criticality of Customer Identity and Access Management

Comprehending the Criticality of Customer Identity and Access Management

In the interconnected digital universe, managing customer identities effectively is a strategic asset. Herein, customer identity and access management (CIAM) systems are critical in driving secure and seamless user experiences across varied digital interfaces, simultaneously safeguarding sensitive data, complying with global regulations, and enhancing enterprise enablement and operational efficiency.

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A good example is Salesforce, which provides robust self-service capabilities, enabling employees to manage access across several services and subscriptions seamlessly. This highlights the power of an efficient CIAM strategy deploying an identity-first approach that blends seamlessly with core business operations while complying with stringent security and regulatory norms.

Decoding CIAM

CIAM is a specialised field within identity management that focuses on managing and securing customer identities. At its core, CIAM enables seamless and secure customer interactions across various digital platforms, such as web and mobile apps, and kiosks, while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations and enhancing the user experience.

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When crafting a CIAM strategy, it’s essential to consider the diverse types of customers a company serves and their unique needs.

The nature of the customer can vary depending on the digital service provided and the business model. For instance, in online shopping, streaming, banking, or food delivery services, the customer is typically an individual consumer. In public-sector digital services, the customer may be a citizen. For enterprise software or SaaS services, the customers could be employees of a subscribing company or a partner organisation providing professional services or reselling solutions.

In essence, CIAM serves as a bridge between companies and their customers, ensuring every interaction is secure, compliant, and user-friendly. By enabling seamless and continuous connections, CIAM allows organisations to collect data with customers’ consent, protecting both company and consumer data.

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Understanding CIAM’s Five Pillars

1. User Onboarding and Registration: The first step is user registration, converting anonymous, casual visitors into known, active, registered website users. In consumer-facing applications, user onboarding may be streamlined with Bring Your Own Identity by using social identifiers or mobile, email, and username identifiers as basic identity verification. This is common in food delivery services, online shopping carts, ride-sharing apps, streaming services, and e-commerce sites. However, more sensitive applications like banking, financial services, government services, and airline systems need verification processes that include validating legal documents such as passports, driving licences, and national IDs. These processes may even need ‘Know Your Customer’ protocols and integrate device fingerprint reputation services plus biometric verification to prevent fraud.

Another crucial aspect is collecting consent during user registration for Terms of Service and privacy policies. This ascertains users know and agree to the legal/privacy terms before opting for the service. For B2B enterprises, registration could typically involve onboarding entire organisations. Often, this may include invitation-based registration flows. Conversely, in product-led B2B SaaS applications, companies can self-onboard by creating their accounts. Examples of these applications include Zoom, Trello, Slack, and Dropbox.

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While protecting security, registration needs to be straightforward and user-friendly. Measures to detect and prevent bots during registration are a must to prevent fraud. Using CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, or other bot-detection tools can ensure only genuine users can register, protecting the platform from spam and automated attacks.

2. Authentication: This ensures users have the necessary credentials to access customer-facing applications. Strong authentication can prevent account takeovers, password stuffing, and password snooping, keeping unauthorised users out via stringent authentication policies. In consumer-facing applications, the authentication experience is enhanced via single sign-on (SSO) and password-less login options like mobile OTPs, email links, passkeys, and social logins such as Google and Facebook. Allowing customers to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) options via authenticator apps, security keys, and push notifications further boosts account access. Adaptive authentication, which increases security based on situational risks like attempting access from a new device, trying to log in from an unusual geographic location, or after a prolonged period of inactivity, can balance user experience alongside security needs. High-value services such as financial applications or government services can use extra layers like biometric verification and liveness checks for higher levels of safety.

3. Authorisation and Access Management: This defines the available rights for authenticated users, applications, or devices. Traditional authorisation relied on role-based access control. To meet more fine-grained needs, attribute-based access control models were introduced, and for further refinement, relationship-based access control was developed (ReBAC). ReBAC evaluates access according to the relationships between entities, e.g., Google Docs. Irrespective of the model, CIAM authorisation involves evaluating access rights to grant appropriate permissions to users, applications, and devices. In consumer-facing applications, access rights can vary as per users’ loyalty levels. In B2B SaaS applications, roles and service subscription tiers matter. 

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4. Self-Service: These capabilities are vital to enhance user experience and lower operational costs. How efficiently users recover their lost or forgotten credentials can be influenced immensely by the ease of access provided by the self-service options. This empowers end users to do things faster or outside normal business hours, boosting the service experience. Operationally, such options automate common customer support and service tasks, saving companies contact centre and chat-based labour expenses. Simple password resets, recovering forgotten user IDs, and managing MFA options such as authenticator apps, security keys, and passkeys are some essential self-service features.

5. Integration with Systems of Record and Business Insight Tools: This involves embedding identity into an organisation’s business tools and processes to facilitate seamless interactions across varied workflows and applications. Enterprises often evolve into multiple siloed identity repositories that serve different business lines and their respective applications. A centralised CIAM system is possible by unifying identity management across all the enterprise properties, which includes numerous outward-facing brands and websites. Such a unification may call for migrating siloed user data repositories or their bidirectional integration to synchronise user profiles.

To help identify and mitigate fraud effectively, one must integrate CIAM with business insight tools such as cyber or web fraud management systems and incorporate both risk-based authentication and behavioural biometrics as well as transaction monitoring systems. Regular use of CIAM transactional data for business intelligence reporting and driving enterprise decisions can immensely enhance organisational efficiency and responsiveness to ongoing market changes.

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Balancing the needs of the five pillars is imperative to make CIAM a core component of new-age digital strategies. Ultimately, this can allow organisations to unlock higher levels of customer trust, loyalty, and engagement.

Written By Malithi Edirisinghe - Director, Architect - Identity and Access Management, WSO2

 

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