Wednesday 27 January 2016

Customer Identity Management and its Importance for Business

Maintaining digital identity of customer has become the first and foremost responsibility of every business nowadays. But it is not as easy as we think. Like any other entity, digital identity too has a life cycle. The life cycle of digital identity comprises the process of creating, managing and removing a digital identity. The different stages of digital life cycles are as follows.

Provisioning

Provisioning is simply a process of creating digital identity by an identity platform.  Suppose you need a web application to maintain digital identities of your organization's customers. Then a very important question arises here and that is who initiate the provisioning of an identity? For an enterprise level it is you because you are the administrator and managing internal identities. But if you are managing customers, then they are administrators of his or her identities.


The three components of customer management platform after provisioning are:

Propagation

After the identity is provisioned, it is propagated to all web applications that are connected and allow user to access their resources after providing the identity. It also includes addition of provisioned identity to database of identities.

Maintenance

After identity is propagated to all web applications, it can be used to perform various functions provided by identity provider to access various internal systems. The functions includes change of password, password recovery and lot more.

Deprovisioning

This is the final stage of identity cycle. In this stage the identity is deleted from all databases for various reasons. The deleted identity credentials will not authenticate and allowed to  access internal systems and resources.

Why you need Identity management Platform?





According to the definition defined by The International Organisation for Standards(ISO) identity management is a process and policies involved in managing digital identity in a particular domain. The crucial role of identity management platform is to manage the protocols and processes with respect to the interaction between identity provider and the customer. Identity management platform covers all the interaction between the identity authority and identity holder.
If you don’t have an identity management system for your organization then your online presence is a workplace with free access. People can easily enter such free access workplace and may steal crucial information and harm your work environment and other protocols.


Identity management is further classified into two types: Enterprise Identity and Access Management(IAM) and Customer Identity and Access Management(cIAM) platforms.
The IAM platforms as the name suggests it is employed only in enterprise level or for local use. In this type of management all the actions are initiated from the enterprise administrator and not the user. Users are not allowed to self manage their identities.


If Enterprise IAM is not the perfect option because of some limitations mentioned above then what is the alternate solution?
Customer identity and access management is the perfect medicine you need for your business. Apart from IAM, cIAM offers an option for users not only to create his or her own identity but also to update and manage it. They can also initiate password recovery options themselves. Now a days your customer will  not wait for you. Provide social sign in to make things even soimpler and convenient. Optimize your website to mobile so that your customer can login through mobile also.

Your customers need all his or her information that is shared with you to be safe and secure and they can be access you at any time. Customer identity and management platform is the best identity platform to do so.

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