Customer expectations are much higher than they used to be. When engaging with brands, customers demand truly seamless digital experiences tailored specifically to their own individual needs. However, reaching these expectations isn’t always easy, and greater personalisation requires even stronger security checks to ensure that valuable personal data can’t be compromised by malicious cybercriminals. In a modern, digital age, striking a balance between cybersecurity and customer experience can frequently be a nightmare scenario.
The rise of customer identity and access management (CIAM) tools are helping businesses to alleviate these nightmares, allowing organisations to provide the frictionless experiences their customers seek without compromising the cybersecurity practices which keep them safe. Auth0’s CIAM report looks at the benefits that these solutions can offer, focusing on how they bring synergy between robust cybersecurity and seamless customer experience.
CIAM helps strengthen perimeter defences
Attack surfaces have expanded at an incredible rate as more devices connect to the network through a combination of BYOD, cloud computing, and hybrid work policies. Traditional perimeter security solutions struggle to defend all these new entry points effectively, leaving gaps for cybercriminals to exploit. CIAM helps to maintain the integrity of business perimeters by providing customers with access to everything they need with one secure set of credentials. This reduces their need to juggle multiple account details, providing them with easier, streamlined access to their desired accounts, whilst cutting the number of avenues threat actors can take to compromise critical security infrastructure. Additional CIAM features such as bot detection and multi-factor authentication (MFA) provide additional layers of perimeter support, with MFA having the additional benefit of allowing users to secure their account in a method that suits their specific needs.
Consolidated user data is easier to protect
Keeping all user data in one location makes it much easier to secure than when it is disjointed across multiple channels. CIAM takes the concept of single sign-on and brings it to the customer, gathering all their information together in one place and making it easily accessible regardless of the channel a user engages from. Having all of the data associated with a customer in one place also helps businesses to stay compliant with the latest privacy regulations. Some of the more notable regulations require businesses to provide any customer with an accurate account of how their data is being used upon request. For customers, having this information provided in a timely manner can be key to their future engagement with a brand. And, in addition to solving privacy and customer experience concerns, storing information in one place also reduces the need for businesses to create multiple, difficult to secure, information silos, allowing them to focus their security efforts in targeted areas of importance.
Streamlined user lifecycle processes benefit everyone
Through account creation, maintenance, and end of life, customers can expect an easy journey with every business they interact with. Customers do not want to be bogged down with tedious processes, like multi-step ‘reset password’ forms, or difficult to execute account termination procedures. A fully integrated CIAM solution with single sign-on and MFA can deliver frictionless account management to customers and help reduce instances of account duplication or password reuse, simultaneously improving customer experience, whilst minimising security risks. Automated features of CIAM like email can also help businesses to clean up user databases to recognise when accounts are no longer in use. Removing these accounts ensures that customer data is dealt with responsibly and reduces the volume of accounts or passwords that could potentially lead to security breaches.
For more information on CIAM and the benefits it can offer, check out the full report from Auth0 here.
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