The evolution of cIAM
The need for managing digital identities first arose at the enterprise or organisation level, with the evolution of digital interface. It was a move away from the manual way of processing records, maintaining employee data and information. Organisations wanted a centralised system for maintaining digital identities of all their employees and provide them access to information, facilities provided by the organisation. The centralised system of securely managing digital identities within an organisation was termed as Identity and Access Management.
The advent of online businesses and spread of internet brought about a need for a connect between businesses and customers. The IAM solutions already in place to manage employees within an organisation was found lagging in terms of managing the millions of users and their digital identities, giving shape to Customer Identity and Access Management.
Customer identity and access management is managing digital identities of customers for businesses. Customer Identity Management is about creating, managing digital customer identities, providing authentication services and storing customer profile data in a systematic, secure, scalable way.
Both IAM and cIAM fall in the ambit of IT, Security.
Differences between IAM and cIAM
- The first point of distinction between IAM and customer identity management is that IAM is an enterprise solution, also termed as an internal identity and access management solution whereas cIAM is an external identity and access management solution.
- IAM is restricted in terms of scale as it can manage a few thousand electronic identities, while cIAM is scalable and can be used to accommodate millions of electronic identities.
- In case of cIAM it is the users who are responsible for registering their accounts, updating as well as setting up their privacy settings. In the case of IAM the creating of accounts, privacy are governed by the policies of the organisation.
- The data and information in case of IAM’s is structured whereas in case of cIAM it is unstructured data.
- cIAM does not require identity governance functions whereas in the case of IAM identity governance functions plays an important role with multiple levels of approval before the creation of an account and the access provided thereof.
- IAM is defined to managing the employee identities and information pertaining to identity data, while cIAM is converging with marketing data, diminishing the gap between identity data and marketing data.
- cIAM solutions is social login enabled, helping users to sign in to web properties using existing social ids while IAM does not provide such an integration.
Future of cIAM
The cIAM industry is expected to grow to $18.3 billion by 2019, helping manage digital identities of customers for medium and large scale businesses. The added advantage for businesses using cIAM helps businesses learn more about their customer through profile data and customer insights bodes good for the future of businesses as they looks to create long term relationships with their customers.