CIAM has become increasingly important as more services move online. Online transactions and interactions, such as banking and medical records (and the ever-increasing volume of data), need to be protected from identity thieves.
These services often log IP addresses to ensure the online security users are who they say they are, but IP addresses can be masked or misused by criminals hiding behind a screen name. By using CIAM tools, businesses can track the origin of a user’s identity and ensure that their security measures match the level of risk involved.
This ensures that companies keep data safe from fraud, as well as hacking attempts.
CIAM tools allow for the identification, authentication, and access management of users across various systems. With this technology, businesses can identify who is accessing their data in real-time. This allows for security measures to be put in place so that only those who should have access do.
CIAM tools also provide businesses with the ability to easily control and monitor everything customers do when they interact with your business. This includes controlling access to specific employees, services, or content; logging and auditing changes in customer information (e.g., changes of address, phone numbers, etc.), and providing targeted marketing across channels.
Below, we will provide a list of just some of the many benefits of CIAM.
Imposes security on complex systems
Today, technology is everywhere. Our lives revolve around it; businesses let us know about their latest deals through social media, our phones notify us of upcoming appointments, and we share meals with friends via apps like Yelp! All this access to information creates a need for security that can be hard to manage when you consider all the places our data could be exposed. Customer identity and access management (CIAM) technologies, such as Okta, protect our sensitive information from loss or theft across all these channels thanks to a single username and password.
Gives customer service agents context for interactions
When your customers access their accounts with their Okta username and password, they automatically bring along the context of where they are logged in. This gives customer service agents a better understanding of what those customers can do, as well as how those interactions should be handled. For example, if a customer is logged into their email account on their mobile phone and their email account on their home computer, an agent will determine which device is best for them to use.
Prevents customer service issues
CIAM solutions are designed with the customer experience in mind. By knowing what customers can do when they’re logged in to Okta, our customers are empowered to perform only the actions that they may take. This makes it more difficult for customers or agents to make mistakes that could negatively affect the experience of themselves or others.
Makes it easy to filter and visualize customer data for marketing
This is a big selling point for our marketing team. By integrating with Okta, you’ll be able to identify the best time to send your customers personalized messages based on their online behavior. You can then use that data in conjunction with behavioral analytics to create a more customized experience for each customer.
Provides companies with the ability to link customers across multiple products and services
This is one of the areas where Okta can truly shine. Okta lets you create a link between previously siloed identities, which allows you to more effectively manage your customers across different touchpoints.
Overall, identity and Access Management enable companies to provide better customer experiences for their customers with its ability to automate business processes. While it’s no easy undertaking, companies that make the investment in CIAM are more likely to be successful than those that don’t.
Can discover misconfiguration in systems, which can show potential security vulnerabilities
The last thing you want is a security vulnerability in your company. While you can’t entirely eliminate the risk of a cyber-attack, you can ensure that your systems are protected against it by using CIAM to discover misconfigurations that indicate potential security vulnerabilities before hackers do.
Conclusion
CIAM is important because it offers the ability to achieve compliance, streamline onboarding processes for new customers, institute customer trust programs, enable or disable specific services and channels, discover misconfigurations in systems that can show potential security vulnerabilities – all of which are important steps toward cultivating trust with customers. The more you can do to show customers that their trust is well-placed, the more likely they are to trust your organization in return.
