![\"DS-Priv-Pol-Mgnmnt\"](\"/b800d4cbc0e7b6c53c2b2d6c495dc445/DS-Priv-Pol-Mgnmnt.webp\")
Off late, identity and access management have changed the way organizations manage heaps of customer and workforce identities securely and efficiently.
\nWhether we talk about organizations utilizing IAMs internally for managing employees’ identities or using the same solution for handling a limited number of customers, the identity management has been an integral part of business growth.
\nHowever, the conventional IAMs aren’t potent enough to handle peak loads, especially when taking millions or billions of customer identities in real time.
\nHere’s where the critical role of CIAM (customer identity and access management) in customer management comes into play!
\nA CIAM can be scaled in real-time depending on the load and number of users accessing the services from a single platform. On the other hand, the traditional IAM can’t deliver results for large-scale deployments.
\nLet’s understand why organizations should switch to customer IAM and how it’s helping businesses stay ahead of the curve.
\nWe’re in a digital-first era where we interact with numerous online platforms daily. Or we can say that multiple applications and media have become integral to our modern lifestyle.
\nAnd hence, we’re always expecting great user experiences reinforced by stringent security since no one would ever wish to sacrifice their identity and personal details.
\nThe conventional IAM was initially designed to handle a limited number of accounts and users working within an organization. It helped provide secure and restricted access to specific resources based on several parameters.
\nHowever, these services were entirely secure and worked flawlessly within an organization with limited users but needed a great user experience.
\nHence, the exact mechanism for managing many users typically on an online platform won’t work since everyone expects a great user experience, robust security, and accessibility.
\nCIAM, on the other hand, delivers exceptional user experience and great accessibility with robust security. Businesses can easily rely on a CIAM when scaling growth by offering a seamless and secure onboarding experience.
\nLet’s understand how a CIAM helps businesses stay ahead of the curve in 2022 and beyond.
\nIn an age where sensational hacking and malicious attacks have become the order of the day, enhanced safeguard against ever-looming threats is indispensable.
\nBy adding multiple layers of shields, new-age CIAM brings into effect strengthened security. Thus, the entire cluster of data remains protected from the prying eyes or, for that matter falling prey to data trackers.
\nCompliance with local data protection laws can be a chore, especially given their constant evolution. A good customer identity platform should enable you to keep up with local laws anywhere in the world where you do business.
\nWith country-specific or regional control over storing and managing personal data, you’ll always meet legal requirements, saving you compliance management costs each year.
\nThese aren’t the only potential costs you can save—legal fees can run high when privacy management fails.
\nPresenting customers with easily self-managed privacy choices and a solid privacy policy also shows them that their data is safe and shows your company is competent and professional in handling these issues. This reputation will encourage customer loyalty in the long run.
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With just one customer identity management system fully managed for you, reliability is maximized, and the need for resources is kept to a minimum. A centralized login system for all of your apps and services makes it easy to add new services as they come online.
\nA cloud implementation can quickly scale up or down depending on your usage, and automated failover can cut downtime to virtually zero.
\nAll told, your CIAM platform needs to boost customer experience in every possible way. A reduced initial entry threshold that leverages social login or passwordless login is just the start.
\nAdvanced analytics, effective self-service options, and integration with all of your customer-facing functions should all work to improve the way customers access your systems.
\nAnd storing everything about one customer in the same place—data, analytics, preferences, and browsing/purchase history—will make it much easier for employees to manage customer accounts.
\nWith increasing customer expectations, businesses need to think out of the box and ensure they offer a great customer experience without compromising security.
\nThe conventional IAM isn’t the right choice for handling many customers, especially when the peak load changes in real time.
\nThe aspects mentioned above of leveraging a CIAM shouldn’t be ignored by businesses thinking to accelerate overall growth.
\n![\"book-a-demo-loginradius\"](\"/8fce571f703a5970dbb1359a2fe0e51a/book-a-demo-loginradius.webp\")
Digital Identity and IAM Domain have been the talk of the technology town for decades. There has been plenty of research, innovation, and information around these two, which led to many terminologies for the platforms providing the relevant features. Some of these terminologies are specific to the characteristics of the platform, while others are used interchangeably.
\nIn this article, let’s discuss the following commonly used terminologies for the platforms providing the relevant features:
\nThese terminologies revolve around the IAM, CIAM, and IDaaS platforms. The infographic below categorizes these terminologies within these platforms:
\n![\"IAM](\"/69f5d8fc6960a5d3d104150136659437/iam_ciam_idaas.webp\")
IAM defines and manages the roles and access privileges of network users and the cases in which users are granted or denied them. The primary purpose of IAM systems is one digital identity per individual. The established digital identity is then maintained, modified, and monitored throughout users' access lifecycles.
\nCIAM is a subset of the broader concept of identity access management (IAM). It explicitly focuses on managing customers' identities who need access to websites, web portals, and mobile apps.
\nIDaaS is an authentication infrastructure that is built, hosted, and managed by a third-party service provider. IDaaS companies supply cloud-based authentication or identity management to enterprises who subscribe. It allows enterprises to use single sign-on, authentication, and access controls to provide secure access to their growing number of software and SaaS applications.
\nIAM is used for employee/internal-facing identity and access management solutions. The following explains a typical example of the IAM implementation within an organization:
\nJohn, a new employee, joins the organization, and the application allows provisioning of his organizational identity. John can then login to his organization's portal, and based on the access configuration, he is either authorized or denied access to information or a resource.
\nBesides, the organization has multiple portals, and John is allowed to access these portals using the same credentials. Throughout the job tenure, John's profile is maintained or updated from time to time. Eventually, when John decides to move on, deleting John's account from one portal revokes his access to all other portals.
\nIAM has the following four components:
\n\n\nOrganizations earlier used on-premises IAM software for identity and access management. Now the identity management process is getting more complicated as organizations add more cloud services to their environments. Thus, as a logical step, the organizations adopt cloud-based Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) and cloud IAM solutions.
\n
CIAM is used for customer-facing solutions. The capabilities of IAM are followed in the CIAM solutions; however, the use cases and requirements vary. Common features of CIAM include:
\nThe following explains a typical example of the CIAM implementation in a customer-facing application:
\nSarah, a new customer registers on the application. If applicable, the application should request for Sarah’s consent on business privacy policies and get her social profile data. The application must ensure the security and privacy of the captured data during registration, social login, or activities performed during her life cycle. Besides, Sarah should be allowed to manage access to her profile data and delete her account from the application. On the other hand, the business should be allowed to get insights on their customer to understand and deliver their needs.
\nThe core components of IAM remain the same across areas like authentication, authorization, user management, and central user repository. Thus, the need for Single Sign-On, Authentication Protocols, Access Management, Centralized and Universal Directories, User Lifecycle Management and Authorization, etc remains the same.
\n\n\nIt is a common misconception that the technology required for CIAM is the same for IAM. CIAM is far more challenging irrespective of the similarities with the IAM, and it is recommended to have a CIAM solution in place for your customers.
\n
The enterprises typically use IDaaS to extend their existing IAM infrastructure. Thus, enterprise IDaaS providers must deploy solutions that can:
\nThe following are the critical features of IDaaS:
\nSingle Sign-On (SSO) and Federation: SSO capability to allow users to authenticate themselves across multiple applications using the same credentials.
\nSimilarly, the federation capability allows the organizations to manage secure authentication for third-party cloud services accessed beyond the control of internal IT departments.
\n\n\nThe enterprises use several applications, mostly cloud-based services, while some of the applications hosted on-premise. Managing the credentials and access to each of those applications has become hectic.
\n
\n\nSince IDaaS provides a single point of user and access management for all the applications, granting or revoking access to users becomes very easy. Besides, it enables SSO to avoid managing separate login credentials for different service providers.
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If you are looking for information on more terminology around the platforms mentioned in this article, add your request in the comments below. I will either address them here or write another article dedicated to your requests and questions!
\n","frontmatter":{"date":"July 24, 2020","updated_date":null,"title":"IAM, CIAM, and IDaaS - know the difference and terms used for them","tags":["iam","ciam","idaas","identity"],"coverImage":{"childImageSharp":{"fluid":{"aspectRatio":1.5037593984962405,"src":"/static/a5130bd86b66f92b9a0458e359a10100/58556/triplets.webp","srcSet":"/static/a5130bd86b66f92b9a0458e359a10100/61e93/triplets.webp 200w,\n/static/a5130bd86b66f92b9a0458e359a10100/1f5c5/triplets.webp 400w,\n/static/a5130bd86b66f92b9a0458e359a10100/58556/triplets.webp 800w,\n/static/a5130bd86b66f92b9a0458e359a10100/99238/triplets.webp 1200w,\n/static/a5130bd86b66f92b9a0458e359a10100/7c22d/triplets.webp 1600w","sizes":"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px"}}},"author":{"id":"Archna Yadav","github":null,"avatar":null}}}},{"node":{"fields":{"slug":"/identity/iam-vs-ciam/"},"html":"The conventional employee identity and access management (IAM) systems were initially designed to manage employee identities. And they aren’t potent enough to cater to customers' diverse needs pertaining to user experience and security.
\nApart from this, employee IAM also doesn’t help when the needs of consumers are growing with every passing year, and internal identity management systems are not built to keep up.
\nUsers now expect a seamless and secure customer experience across multiple platforms, devices, and touchpoints. And the conventional IAM will always struggle to meet these requirements.
\nCustomer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions help to improve the customer experience, reduce security risks, shrink costs, and increase the availability of applications.
\nCIAM solutions are becoming more commonly used in organizations today because they provide several benefits. For example, a customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution can improve the customer experience by increasing the flexibility and customization of applications.
\nCIAM solutions can also reduce security risks by allowing users to access only those applications they need for their work tasks.
\nFinally, these solutions can be very cost-effective because they allow companies to scale their technology needs by providing an easy way to manage all users with one set of tools.
\nThis is where customer IAM solutions come in. These solutions have been built to handle customer authentication requirements, scalability, privacy and data regulations, user experience, and integration.
\nCompared to employee IAM, a customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution improves the customer experience, reduces security risks, shrinks costs, and increases the availability of applications.
\nIn this infographic, we compare the following features of both an IAM and CIAM solution:
\n![\"employee-iam-vs-ciam\"](\"/8e86b315e60149546acd59f33480c9c7/employee-iam-vs-ciam.webp\")