Like a propeller driving a ship, customer identity and access management (CIAM) drives digital business. By enabling smooth interactions with your enterprise, CIAM pushes customer conversions, shortening the time between initial engagement and the final sale. But rough seas can turn smooth sailing into a desperate struggle to stay afloat. In the face of security threats, user errors, and inefficient identity interfaces, an underpowered CIAM solution can fail at the worst possible moment. However, by developing a mature CIAM program, your ship can plow through even the toughest storms.
For an enterprise to make money in the digital marketplace, a CIAM program always comes into play. For both business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C), a CIAM program is vital. Even a person running a private stall at a farmers market leverages CIAM when a customer swipes their credit card, connecting to the identity managed by the cardholder’s bank. For large-scale enterprises recording sensitive personal details, CIAM becomes a major vector for data compromise. Without sufficient architecture, primed to develop to meet the demands of a shifting marketplace, the whole business might capsize.
The Customer Identity and Access Management Baseline
The core objective of a CIAM program is to provide visibility and control over external user identities. Even the most basic CIAM solution should perform four key functions:
- Facilitate customer experiences.
- Secure customer identity stores.
- Possess the capability to scale up and store more identities.
- Have platform-based authentication.
If a CIAM program lacks one of these core features, it cannot be considered a functional system. However, just because the program can fulfill these minimum requirements does not mean it is sufficient even in the short term. Incomplete security strategies, unwieldy UI, manual-only provisioning, and tiresome sign-on requirements create friction in customer experience. However, the improvement strategy can hardly just be “make it better.” A real upgrade to a CIAM program requires an honest look at an enterprise’s identity fabric.
As such, an externally driven benchmarking session is one of your best options. It can give a proper impartial rundown without the likelihood of missing important flaws or being ignorant of potential improvements. Furthermore, a CIAM Program is only one part of a larger identity fabric, tied into other pillars. An expert analysis team knows how these different areas intersect and build upon each other. By starting off with this strong foundation, the maturation of your CIAM becomes much more feasible.
The Criteria of a Successful CIAM Program
When conducting your improvement strategy, it helps to know what your overarching objectives should be in achieving a strong CIAM program. Start by asking these questions:
- Do the identities which are stored on your CIAM interface seamlessly with IAM and IGA? Is it your single source of truth for customer data?
- Are the CIAM identities monitored for suspicious activity and provisioned with appropriate lockout and recovery options?
- Does the CIAM leverage the best tools needed to improve customer experience such as SSO, adaptive MFA, and zero-trust?
- Are the different CIAM IDs secure across all devices?
Integration of the different IAM pillars has several considerable advantages. The ideal setup is to host both external and internal identities on a single identity platform. This allows for all investments to stay cohesive, rather than in different buckets. It allows for active monitoring and policy maintenance, including removing orphaned accounts and self-service recovery options. This feature is of particular importance to a functional CIAM program, as it encapsulates both security and convenience in a single measure.
Single sign-on and adaptive MFA implementation bolster the excellence of a program. They do much to further security by real and appreciable degrees while also demonstrating a modernized and low-friction interaction with your enterprise. All the better if your systems have been built from the start with the objective of independence from hardware, allowing you to service them on any device.
A Managed CIAM Program is Optimal
However, the implementation of these business-driving features is not without the potential for mishap. You need to have someone who knows what you’re doing when handling your customer data, much more so when executing an entire revamp and migration of the CIAM program. Opening the customer IDs to the overall identity fabric can leave dire inroads to critical data. Conversely, if you put in heavy security standards, you risk alienating the people funding you. After all, no one looks forward to extra verification steps hampering user-friendliness, regardless of how much it boosts cybersecurity. An expert benchmarking and implementation are what you need.
By working with a managed identity service provider, your enterprise avoids the common difficulties of a rollout, namely ballooning budgets, uncertain timetables, suboptimal objectives, and subpar execution. By molding their response to the parameters of your needs, a bespoke solution is created that does not rely upon a restrictive one-size fits all approach. This way, your program can achieve its objectives without disrupting ongoing business while implementing meaningful and positive change.
Growing your CIAM program means more than just piling on more identities. It is about ensuring that the additions you make to it are providing a positive result and not creating bloat. It means moving away from stapling on new applications. Instead, you must provide users with an integrated platform that allows them to access your business’ functionality without worrying about their data falling into the wrong hands.
Is your company ready to achieve an optimized CIAM solution? Reach out to a Simeio identity expert today and start your identity improvement journey with an IAM Benchmarking session.
