Identity management sounds complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple. It’s all about knowing who you are and securely sharing that information when needed. Identity management is an extremely useful business practice for companies large or small because it provides security and reduces risk in your organization.
What is CIAM, and what are its benefits?
Customer identity and access management (CIAM) includes managing, controlling, and protecting access to sensitive information on your company’s network. Strong identity management requires significant security measures that protect both the organization and its customers/users. This process ensures only authorized individuals have access to crucial company data while also allowing workers to get their jobs done with an easy-to-use user experience across the entire company’s digital resources. In short, it reduces risk and increases security both in your organization and to your customers.
The risks of not using CIAM
A CIAM solution helps protect your organization from data loss, hackers, malware attacks, data theft through non-compliance with government regulations, i.e., GDPR or SOX, and more. This solution also ensures that your customers can trust you with their personal information.
Traditional IAM solutions aren’t able to scale up with the ever-growing needs of a business, and they may require a massive investment. Additionally, traditional IAM solutions don’t offer a centralized place to manage all identities in your organization. Lastly, they don’t enable you to easily integrate into your on-premises applications or other cloud applications, like Office 365.
How to implement CIAM
CIAM solutions usually come in the form of identity as a Service (IDaaS) providers who manage the identities, passwords, privileged accounts, and access for all users within an organization across any cloud or on-premises application. These solutions are hosted in the cloud, which enables them to scale up or down with ease.
What are some best practices for implementing and using CIAM?
CIAM not only provides a better user experience but also reduces the time spent on password resets. The best way to do this is to implement single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). SSO minimizes account logins while MFA adds an extra layer of security for login access.
Are there any downsides?
There are no downsides to having CIAM solutions. It just gives you a secure and better way of managing your users’ access to applications and systems.
Why is CIAM the future?
CIAM solutions work across cloud and on-premises applications to provide a centralized place to manage all your identities, including users, partners, and devices. CIAM allows you to easily integrate into applications like Office 365, which provides a better user experience by reducing password prompts and making it easier to manage and reset passwords.
CIAM solutions give you the ability to provide a comprehensive view of an individual’s identity across your entire organization by unifying identities from multiple sources into a single IDaaS platform. This empowers teams to deliver more secure access through better user experiences.
How can you ensure that your organization’s CIAM strategy is successful?
CIAM is a vital part of a successful digital transformation. To ensure a CIAM strategy is effective, it should meet all requirements to handle company growth, be scalable, and have easy-to-use management tools to keep track of everything.
If CIAM isn’t something your organization currently takes advantage of, then it may be time to implement one. By providing a secure user experience, the right tools are put in place to protect users and company data.
One sure way to do this is to implement single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). SSO minimizes account logins while MFA adds an extra layer of security for login access.
The importance of customer data and how to protect it
This continues to be a prevalent topic today. According to the 2017 Forrester Data Risk Report, two data breaches occur every week in North America alone. That’s why CIAM is so important and one sure way companies can do this is by implementing SSO and MFA solutions.
When companies protect their customers’ data with unbreakable authentication, it minimizes account logins. For example, customers can enter their username and password once to access all the company’s apps, websites, files, etc., which reduces the risk of being hacked or having their accounts compromised.
Conclusion
Customer identity and access management solutions are crucial to the security of all company assets. SSO and MFA solutions are great ways to ensure customers can easily access their data while also strengthening cybersecurity. Implementing these measures will help protect your customers’ sensitive information from being hacked or leaked, especially in today’s digital age.