What is Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)?

Businesses employ CIAM solutions to regulate access to their public websites and digital assets. CIAM solutions simplify the process for customers to sign up and log in to online applications and services. They safeguard data privacy and provide protection against identity theft, fraud, and abuse. Additionally, customers can effortlessly manage their account profiles and security settings on their own. CIAM solutions facilitate businesses to integrate user registration functions and robust identity management and access controls into their customer-facing applications. As a result, companies can enhance customer experience, bolster security, and ensure compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR. CIAM solutions are generally provided as cloud-based services managed and hosted by a reliable third-party to provide simplicity, flexibility, and scalability.

Key Features of Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – The majority of CIAM solutions offer MFA to enhance security by requiring customers to provide multiple forms of evidence to gain access to a website or online application. AI-powered adaptive authentication methods are now available, which use contextual or behavioral analytics to determine which authentication factors are needed for a particular customer in a specific situation. This helps to prevent user impersonation and credential theft.
Single Sign-On (SSO) – Most CIAM solutions support SSO, allowing customers to access multiple online applications and services using a single set of social networking credentials, such as Facebook, Google, or Microsoft login credentials. This enhances customer satisfaction by eliminating password fatigue and making it faster and easier for customers to access websites and apps. Leading CIAM solutions support a range of federated identity management protocols like SAML, Oauth, and OpenID Connect.
Self-Service Registration and Account Management – Most CIAM solutions allow customers to sign-up for services, manage their account settings, reset passwords, and update their communication and consent preferences without engaging customer service. This improves customer experience and reduces workload for customer service teams.
Centralized Customer Directory – Most CIAM solutions provide centralized directories and APIs for managing customer records and sharing data across sales, marketing, and business systems. Companies can collect customer information for analytics and business intelligence while controlling how data is shared to ensure compliance with customer consent preferences and data privacy regulations.
Developer Tools and APIs – Most CIAM solutions offer SDKs, REST APIs, and widgets that enable businesses to embed customer authentication and authorization functionality into their websites and online applications. This allows for custom-branded login pages, personalized customer experiences, and quick enablement of social logins.

CIAM Solutions vs Traditional IAM Solutions:

CIAM solutions are often compared to traditional Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions.
CIAM and IAM solutions both provide access controls, MFA functionality, and SSO capabilities to ensure strong security and improve user experiences.
However, in practice the two solutions are aimed at different audiences and address different functional and operating requirements.
Traditional IAM solutions are intended to authenticate and authorize employees and contractors accessing corporate applications and IT systems.
They are engineered to support tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of users.
They are designed to work with enterprise directory services like Active Directory and to integrate with corporate HR and IT systems.
As a general rule they are not subject to rigorous data privacy and consent regulations like GDPR.
CIAM solutions, by contrast, are intended to authenticate and authorize customers accessing public-facing applications and services.
They are engineered to support millions (or even billions) of users.
They are designed to support social login and to integrate with a variety of sales, marketing, and business intelligence systems.
They are governed by strict data privacy and consent regulations like GDPR.