Identity Management: How Does CIAM differ from IAM?

If you work in the tech sector, it may be your job to create and/or implement identity access management (IAM) systems. Even if you play a different role at work—say in human resources—you more than likely manage your company’s IAM policies and procedures.

This could involve authenticating and monitoring employees: making sure your network has strong authentication policies and that employees have only the credentials they absolutely need to perform respective roles. Or you might be part of the IT security team that revokes inappropriately assigned permissions and privileges.

But are you just as familiar with CIAM (customer identity and access management)? What are some of the key differences you need to understand?

According to some experts, this is a contentious question. “Solutions providers around the world have positioned their products on either side of the IAM vs. CIAM debate, with several prominent vendors proclaiming their specialization in CIAM,” says Ben Canner, an enterprise technology writer and analyst covering Identity Management, SIEM, Endpoint Protection and Cybersecurity.

“Other solution providers argue that the IAM vs CIAM question is semantic and that comprehensive IAM solutions can secure CIAM use cases,” Canner adds.

While IAM and CIAM share numerous similarities in their technical capabilities, CIAM requires tools that IAM solutions typically don’t possess, like branding control, consent management, user registration and profile personalization.

“At the most fundamental level, IAM is internal-facing while CIAM is externally-oriented,” says Thierry LeVasseur, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur and digital security innovator. “CIAM technology evolved to provide more security, control and visibility of data and information related to customer identities. Traditional IAM, like the kind used for employees to connect to internal and cloud-based resources, provides great system security but falls well short of customer-specific requirements such as consent, preference and privacy management.”

Another fundamental difference between customers and employees, says LeVasseur, is that customers have a choice:  “If you don’t meeting their expectations, or if they suspect their data might be compromised, they can easily go to a competitor.”

According to Okta, one major difference involves analytics. “Some CIAM vendors started building their services at a time when the world of digital transformation was just getting started. They may have been visionaries, but their initial focus was more on tracking user behavior and enabling marketing analytics. Those are important requirements, but the market for those products has matured, and there are now plenty of options for marketing analytics for a CMO to choose from.”

Akamai, a leading content delivery network and cloud service provider, says in a white paper that “CIAM goes beyond traditional IAM in supporting some baseline features for analyzing customer behavior, as well as collecting consent for user data usage, and integration into CRM, connected devices, and marketing automation systems.”

IT departments “should welcome CIAM initiatives, as they provide an opportunity for IT, usually considered a cost center, to closely team with Marketing, a revenue producing center,” Akamai concludes.

Ultimately, notes Ben Canner, the question of IAM vs. CIAM remains murky. “Enterprises need to review their own use cases and carefully investigate possible solutions providers in order to find the best fit for their needs.

“It may not be clear-cut, but your consumers and employees’ security are in your hands. You owe it to them to make the best decision possible. You may not get another chance at it.”